The telegraph manual: a complete history and description of the semaphoric, electric and magnetic telegraphs of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, ancient and modern.

RONALD'S ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH,
CHAPTER XI.
Invention of Ronald's Electric Telegraph-Experiments and Description of the
Apparatus-Description of an Electrograph.
INVENTION OF RONALD S ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
THE Ronald Electric Telegraph was invented in 1816, at
Hammersmith, London, England, by Mr. Francis Ronald, and
a description of it was published by him in 1823. He erected
eight miles of insulated wire on his lawn, and besides, he buried in the earth five hundred and twenty-five feet, in a trench
dug for that purpose, four feet deep. The wire through the
air was insulated with silk strings suspended from trees and
poles. The subterranean wire was placed through thick glass
tubes, and these were placed in troughs made of dry wood, two
inches square. The troughs were filled with pitch. He employed the ordinary electric machine, generating high-tension
electricity, and the pith-ball electrometer, in the following
manner. He placed two clocks at two stations; these clocks
had upon the second-hand arbor a dial with twenty letters on
it; a screen was placed in front of each of these dials, and an
orifice was cut in each screen, so that one letter only at a time
could be seen on the revolving dial. These clocks were made
to go isoehronously, and, as the dial moved round, the same letter always appeared through the orifices of each of these
screens. The pith-ball electrometers were hung in front of the
dials.
It is evident, therefore, that, if these pith-balls could be made
to move at the same instant of time, a person at the transmitting station, by causing such motion in both those electrometers, would be able to inform the attendant at the distant