The Road to the Telegraph: A Forgotten History
A fragment of a scientific chronicle tracing the long and stumbling path from a passing notion of the abbé Barthélémy to the invention of the electric telegraph by Morse and Wheatstone, showing how many decades of frustrated trials preceded the technology that would change the world.
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La CróNica · March 5, 1873 · Page 2
1 min readTranslated from French · original wording preserved in English
My turn will say little more or less the same thing. You will well understand that the operation may be further facilitated: that the first movement of the needle could ring a bell to announce that the oracle is about to speak. I like the idea very much. It would soon be corrupted by being applied to espionage in armies and in politics, but it would be most agreeable for the commerce of friendship."
The idea of the abbé Barthélémy had its beginning of execution, and the economist Young, in his "Travels through France" (1780), tells of having attended a session of magnetic transmission. Only in 1774, two years after the date of the abbé Barthélémy's letter, did a Genoese physicist, Lesage, timidly suggest that from these vague data an apparatus might be built. The idea found no echo. In Germany, Reiser in 1794, and Salvá in Spain in 1798, likewise gave themselves over to fruitless trials, followed by a long period of thirty years. The first truly formal attempt dates from 1832: the German Schilling set up in St. Petersburg an apparatus that functioned for a few days to the great amusement of the curious: it was no more than a toy, but the way had been opened. Morse and Wheatstone had the glory of inventing the apparatus that functions today throughout the civilized world.
Is it not curious to see how much time is required for a fertile seed to bear fruit? It may be that within a century, after so many laborious trials, the problem of the direction of balloons, with which so many ingenious minds now struggle, will likewise be solved. The abbé Barthélémy had nothing more than a presentiment, and he communicated it to Mad. Deffand in a charming form and merely as a curiosity. He did not suspect that this amiable jest was in fact an entire revelation.
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