Electric Telegraph

in a general sense an apparatus by which signals may be transmitted to considerable distances by means of voltaic currents propagated on metallic wires. Morse is the father of the present commercial system of telegraphy. He constructed the first line over which an intelligible me age was sent for any distance, the line being built from Baltimore to Washington. The first me age, “‘ What hath God wrought,” was sent in 1843, by Profe or Morse, to his a istant, Alfred Vail. The United States Fb eo appropriated $30,000 to further the invention. Recently many experiments have been made to discover a succe ful mode of telegraphing without wires, and early in 1897 Guglielmo Marconi, a young Italian electrician, submitted to the British Post office Department a system of wirele telegraphy depending not on electro-magnetic, but on electro-static effects. The great difference between the earlier systems and Mr. Marconi’s is that in the former a wire on each side was required, while in Marconi’s vibrations are simply set up by one apparatus and received by the other.