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

MEISNER S PARATONNERRE. 575
with a small roof. On each side of the post were two small
copper wires p p', about twenty feet long, which connected
the line wire with the apparatus T in the station-house. By
this arrangement the lightning charge traversing the line overleaped the small separation at o, and passed beyond the station,
and did not go over the longer route through the apparatus.
During the most severe storms, no further injury was done at
the stations than the burning of the small wires p p, p/ p'.
WAhen a plus charge traverses p, it enters apparatus B, inside
o' the telegraph station, which, when thus charged, serves to
(e,:tach the receiving apparatus T.
MEISNER S PARATONNERRE.
On the.5th of May, 1846, Mr. Meisner, of Germany, was
noticing the telegraph wires, and he saw the electricity leap
from the line to the earth wire in the station, burning the fine
wire of the magnet coils. This circumstance led him to construct an arrangement 10
in all the stations of g
the ducal Brunswick A-.
state telegraph, for the
purpose of protecting
lainhe operators and thenea each
apparatuses. Fig. ure
10 represents one of LW
them.
The naked wire of
the line is insulated
on the poles by porcelain, shaped as bells, and it enters the ground near each
station. It is insulated with gutta-percha, and drawn through
tubes of lead or iron. Fig. 11.
This subterranean section, L, is conducted i l ill ill 5
through the foundation ll
of the house, and thence -
to the telegraph room,
where it is fastened to
the copper plate A, which is eight inches long, four wide, and
one eighth of an inch thick. From this copper plate A proceeds a fine insulated wire, 1, to the telegraph apparatus
-through the voltaic battery, and thence through the wire E,
traversing the copper plate B B, and then with the wire e to
the earth, or onward toward the next station. Fig. 11 is a
sectional view of both plates as screwed to the common base;