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KF5JRV > TECH 14.04.16 12:16l 33 Lines 1875 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: First Electric Telegraph
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Francis Ronalds Builds the First Working Electric Telegraph 1816
In 1816 English meteorologist and inventor Francis Ronalds built the
first working electrostatic telegraph. This was the first "electric"
medium for communication. Ronalds's device involved two synchronized
clocks whose dials were marked with the letters of the alphabet.
Instead of hands, each clock had a rotating disk with a notch cut
into it so that only one letter on the clock face was visible at a
time. Ronalds placed one clock at each end of eight miles of wire
insulated by glass tubing that he had laid down in an elaborate
series of back & forth coils in his garden in Hammersmith, London,
and used electrical impulses to transmit signals between them. He
wrote to Viscount Melville, First Lord of the British Admiralty,
offering to demonstrate his telegraph, describing his invention as
"a mode of conveying telegraphic intelligence with great rapidity,
accuracy, and certainty, in all states of the atmosphere, either
at night or in the day, and at small expense." However John Barrow,
secretary to the admiralty, wrote back to Ronalds saying that
"telegraphs of any kind are now [after the conclusion of the
Napoleonic wars] totally unnecessary, and that no other than the
one now in use [a semaphore telegraph] will be adopted". Ronalds
never patented his work. Eventually Charles Wheatstone and William
Fothergill Cooke patented and popularized Ronalds's system.
Ronalds first published an account of his invention in Descriptions
of an Electrical Telegraph, and of some other Electrical Apparatus
(London, 1823).
Ronalds was also a pioneer collector of books and pamphlets on
electricity, magnetism and telegraphy. Alfred J. Frost edited
a catalogue of his library: Catalogue of books, papers...
electricity, magnetism, telegraph in the Ronalds Library (1880).
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