Heroes of the Telegraph | Page 4

rock.
However this may be, we are told that Thales of Miletus attributed the
attractive properties of the amber and the lodestone to a soul within
them. The name Electricity is derived from ELEKTRON, the Greek for
amber, and Magnetism from Magnes, the name of the shepherd, or,
more likely, from the city of Magnesia, in Lydia, where the stone
occurred.
These properties of amber and lodestone appear to have been widely
known. The Persian name for amber is KAHRUBA, attractor of straws,
and that for lodestone AHANG-RUBA attractor of iron. In the old
Persian romance, THE LOVES OF MAJNOON AND LEILA, the lover
sings--
'She was as amber, and I but as straw: She touched me, and I shall ever
cling to her.'
The Chinese philosopher, Kuopho, who flourished in the fourth century,
writes that, 'the attraction of a magnet for iron is like that of amber for
the smallest grain of mustard seed. It is like a breath of wind which
mysteriously penetrates through both, and communicates itself with the
speed of an arrow.' [Lodestone was probably known in China before
the Christian era.] Other electrical effects were also observed by the
ancients. Classical writers, as Homer, Caesar, and Plutarch, speak of
flames on the points of javelins and the tips of masts. They regarded
them as manifestations of the Deity, as did the soldiers of the Mahdi
lately in the Soudan. It is recorded of Servius Tullus, the sixth king of
Rome, that his hair emitted sparks on being combed; and that sparks

came from the body of Walimer, a Gothic chief, who lived in the year
415 A.D.
During the dark ages the mystical virtues of the lodestone drew more
attention than those of the more precious amber, and interesting
experiments were made with it. The Romans knew that it could attract
iron at some distance through an intervening fence of wood, brass, or
stone. One of their experiments was to float a needle on a piece of cork,
and make it follow a lodestone held in the hand. This arrangement was
perhaps copied from the compass of the Phoenician sailors, who
buoyed a lodestone and observed it set towards the north. There is
reason to believe that the magnet was employed by the priests of the
Oracle in answering questions. We are told that the Emperor Valerius,
while at Antioch in 370 A.D., was shown a floating needle which
pointed to the letters of the alphabet when guided by the directive force
of a lodestone. It was also believed that this effect might be produced
although a stone wall intervened, so that a person outside a house or
prison might convey intelligence to another inside.
This idea was perhaps the basis of the sympathetic telegraph of the
Middle Ages, which is first described in the MAGIAE NATURALIS of
John Baptista Porta, published at Naples in 1558. It was supposed by
Porta and others after him that two similar needles touched by the same
lodestone were sympathetic, so that, although far apart, if both were
freely balanced, a movement of one was imitated by the other. By
encircling each balanced needle with an alphabet, the sympathetic
telegraph was obtained. Although based on error, and opposed by
Cabeus and others, this fascinating notion continued to crop up even to
the days of Addison. It was a prophetic shadow of the coming
invention. In the SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA, published in 1665, Joseph
Glanvil wrote, 'to confer at the distance of the Indies by sympathetic
conveyances may be as usual to future times as to us in literary
correspondence.' [The Rosicrucians also believed that if two persons
transplanted pieces of their flesh into each other, and tattooed the grafts
with letters, a sympathetic telegraph could be established by pricking
the letters.]
Dr. Gilbert, physician to Queen Elizabeth, by his systematic researches,
discovered the magnetism of the earth, and laid the foundations of the
modern science of electricity and magnetism. Otto von Guericke,

burgomaster of Magdeburg, invented the electrical machine for
generating large quantities of the electric fire. Stephen Gray, a
pensioner of the Charterhouse, conveyed the fire to a distance along a
line of pack thread, and showed that some bodies conducted electricity,
while others insulated it. Dufay proved that there were two qualities of
electricity, now called positive and negative, and that each kind
repelled the like, but attracted the unlike. Von Kleist, a cathedral dean
of Kamm, in Pomerania, or at all events Cuneus, a burgher, and
Muschenbroek, a professor of Leyden, discovered the Leyden jar for
holding a charge of electricity; and Franklin demonstrated the identity
of electricity and lightning.
The charge from a Leyden jar was frequently sent through a chain of
persons clasping hands, or a length of wire with the earth as part of the
circuit.