THE LONDON ANECDOTES. The Electric Telegraph. THE FIRST ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH THE first electric telegraph of any extent, completed in England, was that between London and Portsmouth. When it was laid, the testing experiment naturally excited great curiosity; all being anxious to ascertain whether the electricity would travel through the earth uninterruptedly — in short, whether the communication was entire and unbroken. On the day of trial, the signal was given at the Vauxhall terminus, and every eye was fixed upon the needle; but the signal was not answered; it was repeated, but with the same want of success; it was tried a third time: at last, the needle began to move, and the letters they signalled were, "fast asleep by the fire," which indicated the condition of the clerk, whose drowsiness had, for a time, caused no little mortification to the experimenters. B ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH. UPWARDS of sixty years ago, (or, in 1787-89,) when Arthur Young was travelling in France, he met with a Monsieur Lomond, "a very ingenious and inventing mechanic," who had made a remarkable discovery in electricity. "You write two or three words on a paper," says Young: "he takes it with him into a room, and turns a machine inclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electrometer, a small, fine, pith ball; a wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment; and his wife, by remarking the corresponding motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate; from which it appears that he has formed an alphabet of motions. As the length of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be carried on at any distance. Whatever the use may be, the invention is beautiful." This discovery, however, lay unnoticed until about three years since; though the apparatus was designed to effect the same end as the electric telegraph, by means very similar. The possibility of applying electricity to telegraphic communication was conceived by several other persons, long before it was attempted upon a practical scale. The Rev. Mr. Gamble, in his description of his original shutter-telegraph, published towards the close of the last century, alludes to a project of electrical communication. Mr. Francis Ronalds, in a pamphlet on this subject, published in 1823, states that Cavallo proposed to convey intelligence by passing given num bers of sparks through an insulated wire; and that, in 1816, he himself made experiments upon this principle, which he deemed more promising than the application of galvanic or voltaic electricity, which had been projected by some Germans and Americans. He succeeded perfectly in transmitting signals through a length of eight miles of insulated wire; and he describes minutely the contrivances necessary for adapting the principle to telegraphic communication. It is, however, to the joint labours of Messrs. W. F. Cooke and Professor Wheatstone that electric telegraphs owe their practical application; and, in a statement of the facts respecting their relative positions in connexion with the invention, drawn up at their request by Sir M. I. Brunel and Professor Daniell, it is observed that "Mr. Cooke is entitled to stand alone, as the gentleman to whom this country is indebted for having practically introduced and carried out the electric telegraph as a useful undertaking, promising to be a work of national importance; and Professor Wheatstone is acknowledged as the scientific man whose profound and successful researches had already prepared the public to receive it as a project capable of practical application."-(Penny Cyclopædia, voce "Telegraph.") BIRTH OF PRINCE ALFRED TELEGRAPHED FROM SLOUGH TO LONDON. By the electric telegraph on the Great Western Railway, the auspicious event of the accouchement of her Majesty, and the birth of Prince Alfred, at Windsor Castle, on the morning of August 6, 1844, was telegraphed to London within eleven minutes. The details are as follows: At two minutes past six o'clock, a messenger, mounted upon one of the fleetest horses in the royal stables, was dispatched from Windsor Castle to Mr. Howell, the superintendent of the Slough station. He was instructed to communicate by the electric telegraph with the person in attendance at the Paddington station, to the effect, that the letters which had been lying there for some days past, addressed to the cabinet ministers and the great officers of state, were to be delivered at their residences without delay. The messenger reached the Slough station within eight minutes of his departure from the Castle, or at ten minutes past six o'clock; and within three minutes, not only was the telegraph at work, but the communication was dispatched to Paddington, and an acknowledgment of its receipt returned to Slough; all this being effected within eleven minutes of the special messenger's departure from the Castle! As soon as possible after the receipt of the communication, a special train left the Paddington station, conveying the cabinet ministers and great officers of state, which was instantly telegraphed to Slough, so that the carriages might be in readiness there to convey the official personages to Windsor Castle. On the above day, also, there were performed some wonders of railway travelling. The journey from Slough to the Paddington terminus was accomplished in less time than the distance had ever previously been traversed by a special passenger train on the Great Western line. The eighteen miles and a quarter occupied only fifteen minutes and ten seconds, being at the rate of upwards of seventy miles an hour! THE TELEGRAPH BENEATH THE THAMES. Ar the opening of George the Third's Museum, at King's College, in June, 1843, an interesting experiment was performed before Prince Albert by Professor Wheatstone, with one of his telegraphs, so as to form a communication between the College and the lofty Shot Tower on the opposite bank of the Thames. This was done by laying the wire along the parapets of the terrace at Somerset House and Waterloo Bridge, and thence to the top of the Tower, about 150 feet high, where one of the telegraphs was placed; the wire then descended, and a plate of zinc, attached to its extremity, was plunged into the mud of the river, whilst a similar plate was attached to the extremity at the north side, and was immersed in the water. The circuit was thus completed by the entire breadth of the Thames, and the telegraphs acted as well as if the circuit were entirely metallic. THE TELEGRAPH THE MESSENGER OF DEATH. THE following is the first instance, to our knowledge, in which the telegraph has been instrumental as an agent |