Masters of Space Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty

nchanted Lyre-Wheats

ne Installed-The Capt

ic Tran

ch had been created for the service of man, we should pause to consider the achievements of Charles Wheatstone. Together with William Fothergill Cooke, another

books. His father eventually took him from his uncle's charge and allowed him to follow his bent. He translated poetry from the French at the age of fifteen, and wrote some verse of his own. He spent all the money he could secure on books. Becoming interested in a book on Volta's experimen

s described. Aided by his older brother, he set to work on a battery as a source of current. Running short of funds with which to purchase copper

. Really the lyre was merely a sounding-box, and the vibrations of the music were conveyed from instruments, played in the next room, to the lyre through a steel rod. The young man spent much time experimenting with the transmission of sound. Having conveyed music through the steel rod to his enchanted lyre, much to the my

e used to render musical concerts audible at a distance. Thus an opera performed in a theater might be conveyed through rods to other buildings

transmission and reproduction of sound followed, and he devoted no little attention to the construction of improved musical instruments. He even made some efforts to produce a practical talking-machine, and was convinced that one would be attained. At thirty-tw

, an army officer home on leave, became interested in the telegraph and devoted himself to putting it on a working basis. He had already exhibited a crude set when he came to Wheatstone, realizing his own lack of scientific knowledge. The

n of the current. Five separate circuits and needles were used, and a variety of signals could thus be sent. Five wires, with a sixth return wire, were used in the first experimental line erected in London in 1837. So in

lic at large. After many disappointments the inventors secured the cooperation of the Great Western Railroad, and a line was erected for a dista

hed ahead and the police in London were instructed to arrest him upon his arrival. "He is dressed as a Quaker," ran the message. There was no Q in the alphabet of-the five-needle instrument, and so the sender spelled Quaker, Kwaker. The clerk at the receiving end could not-understand the strange word, and asked to have it repeated again and again. Finally some one suggested that the mes

deflections in which it was arranged to move, step by step, at the will of the sending station. The single-needle instrument, though generally displaced by Morse's telegr

r arbitration. They reported that the telegraph was the result of their joint labors. To Wheatstone belongs the credit for devising the apparatus; to Cooke for introducing it and placing it before

ch a system was the forerunner of the electrically wound and regulated clocks with which we are now so familiar. He also devised a method for measuring the resistance which wires offer to the passage of an electric current. This is known a

message is first punched in a strip of paper which, when passed through the sending instrument, transmits the message. By this means he was able to send messages

eiving this honor in 1868. Wheatstone took an active part in the development

it is because Morse, taking up the work where others had left off, was able to invent an instrument which so fully satisfied the requirements of man for so long a period that he is