NEWSPAPER LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. tters of Mr. Dawks and of Mr. | yfully alluded to by the Spec lar announcements of the prices rs claim our attention before ubject. In 1706, the price of Postman, then "printed for S. T. Goddard, bookseller, Normall quarto sheet, was stated as halfpenny-but a penny not , in 1723, the proprietor of the tte, or Henry Crossgrove's News, d a rise in the price of his jourto inform my friends that, on E, this newspaper will be sold d continue at that price. The raising to a penny is, because I to sell it under any longer, and of my customers will think it nny, since they shall always intelligence, besides other diis amusing notice is sufficiently e opine that the public of the ould require a more detailed erhaps, extended this chapter length, by devoting too much particular branch of the subpaper history at this period is ies, and we will close it with ost unique of them all-the ectus of the Salisbury Post 4€5 'Any person in the countrie may order it by the post-coach, carriers, or market people, to whom they shall be carefully delivered. "It shall be always printed in a sheet and a half, and on as good paper; but this, containing the whole week's news, can't be afforded under two pence. NOTE.-For encouragement of all those that may have occasion to enter advertisements, this paper will be made publick in every market town, forty miles distant from this city, and several will be sent as far as Exeter. "Besides the news, we perform all other matters belonging to our art and mystery, whether in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, algebra, mathematicks, &c. "Printed by Samuel Farley, at his office, adjoyning to Mr. Robert Silcock's, on the ditch in Sarum, anno 1715." This voluminous title occupied two pages out of the two sheets of small folio of which this first number of the paper was composed. Part of the intelligence appears to be taken from the London papers, but one portion is declared to be "all from the written letter." An ingenious correspondent of one of the London magazines has made the following calculation of the income of a paper of this description : "The entire income of the paper, to meet every expense, including its delivery to subscribers-no trifling matter, we may infer, in the then imperfect state of the post-office deliveries, and which must have rendered special messengers indispensable to its circulation-the entire income amounted to no more than twenty-five shillings each number, or three pounds fifteen shillings per week." bury Postman, or Pacquet of om France, Spaine, Portugal, September 27th, 1715. No. 1. paper contains an abstract of rial occurrences of the whole and domestick, and will be y post, provided a sufficient. bscribe for its encouragement. dred subscribe, it shall be de- How insignificant a figure must the proprivate or publick-house in vincial press have made in those days, takday, Thursday, and Saturdaying it at this estimate! How humble must ght of the clock during the have been its workers-how cramped its and by six in the summer, for means of gaining or of giving information! e each. .-NO. IV. 30 him by his Creator's h debted for the gift th the light, the electric f cal principles which enl universe, have been th the philosopher, while and the water raised t depths of the earth, ha agents. We should require t science, were we to rec covery by which the been established upon w depend, and to associa immortal name by whic is in records little kno preciated, that such na those who have applie practical use, that the successful invention is round their brow that porary fame is entwin Oersted, Arago, and whose discoveries the graph would never hav pronounced even in uni mechanical inventors wh by their labors. In enumerating the and the passing age, greatest of them all. stronger in our natur prompts us to the red Gratitude is one of the To feel and to express i capacities, to discharge owe to a benefactor. It with nations. The gift pher confers upon his r only by the community There is no cosmical le nizance of the world's principle of philanthrop the patriotic impulse in ments to the remunera vice. Is it not then th the world, the most as which we have to deal, THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. gle, that not one of the great the world owes the gigantic have enumerated, have ever those marks of honor, which esman takes to himself, and omplices;-which characteric juggler, and which shine the human hyæna who has life in the battle-field of unive war? like the present, and within ce, it will be difficult to congrams, a distinct idea of the s which are combined in the d use of the Electric Telea little attention on the part is difficulty may to a certain ounted, and we hope to be ntelligible idea of the general arrangements by which this en brought to such high and Fection. 467 length, and found that it moved through municated with the iron rod which was to egraph, which means to write ortant step to the invention of graph was made upwards of s ago by M. Le Monnier in William Watson in England. sed the electric shock to pass wire nearly 6,000 feet in Renfrew, Feb. 1, 1753. * When the writer of this article first perused monwealth, an ably-conducted Glasgow paper, in guage of the chimes being put to the tr every letter. "The same thing n ed. Let the balls b characters as before, 1 the ends of the hori with the barrel, let a the electrified cask ( contact with the hori be so contrived at the them may be removed horizontal by the slig bring itself again int liberty. This may be small spring and slider ods, which the least i In this way the charac to the balls, excepting secondaries is removed horizontal, and then th end of the horizontal from its ball. But I way of variety. Some may perhaps the electric fire has diminish sensibly in its length of wire that ha yet as that has never e yards, it may be read far greater length it diminished, and proba drained off in a few mil air. To prevent the longer argument, lay of end to the other with a cement. This may be additional expense; a per se, will effectually s fire from mixing with am, &c., C. M." Here we have an e wards of a hundred ye present day would con tiously, and we are con C. M. was the true inv telegraph, and that ev that time, however sag can be viewed in no oth provement. It is singul author should not have obvious modes for dimi wires; but as he seem pectation of his inventi probably contented hin view of the principle. "If any body should think this way tiresome, let him, instead of the balls, suspend a range of bells from the roof equal in number to the letters of the alphabet, gradually decreasing in size from the Bell A to Z, and from the horizontal wires let there be another set reaching to the several bells, one, viz., from the horizontal wire A to the Bell A, another from the horizontal wire B to the bell B, &c. Then let him who begins the discourse bring the wire in contact with the barrel as before; and the electrical spark working on bells of different sizes, will inform the correspondent by the sound what wires have been touched. And thus by some prac- The Author was obvio tice they may come to understand the lan- Watson's experimente. THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. -ars after this invention was year 1774, M. Lesage of have established a telegraph o far as it has been describthe same as that of our H. It had twenty-four wires insulating material, with a meter attached to each wire, ich indicated the letters of tryman Arthur Young was 7, he either saw or heard of ph which he thus describes: s made a remarkable disity. You write two or three r. He takes them with him turns an electrical machine, electrometer with a little pith of a feather. A copper a similar electrical machine ment, and his wife, on obment of the corresponding ords which it indicates, from that he has constructed an on. As the length of the s no difference on the effect, might be maintained at a or example, at a besieged oses much more worthy of housand times more innoious from this description letters of the alphabet must ed by different numbers of the pith ball, making one arrator of the message. Betancourt, a French engi telegraphic wires between drid, and transmitted mese electric discharges from vallo, in 1795, proposed to ong wires by the inflammaombustible or detonating s gunpowder, phosphorus, hydrogen, or by means of sparks given out by the ep was made in telegraphic Francis Ronalds. Previous ucted a telegraph on his smith, by insulating eight silk strings. He made the with 525 feet of bronzed as laid in a trough of wood well lined both within and h, and inside the trough glass tubes through which e joints of the glass tubes ith short and wider tubes 469 In all these contrivances, ordinary or statical electricity, such as is produced by friction in electrical machines, was employed; and if no other form of the electric force had been discovered, it is obvious, from the preceding inventions, that we should have had at this day a real working electric telegraph, not so simple, nor with so many resources, but still an instrument which would have amply fulfilled the grand object of communicating intelligence with the speed of lightning. A new source of electric power, what has been called dynamic electricity, however, was discovered by Volta in 1800, and became the agent in various new forms of the electric telegraph. If we take a disc of copper like a penny piece, and another of zinc of the same size, and placing one above the tongue, and the other below it, make them touch at or below the tip of the tongue, we shall feel a sharp taste which disappears as soon as the discs are freed from contact. If we now join these two discs with a piece of wire soldered to each, and place them in a glass or stone ware vessel of salt water, or water made acid with nitric, muriatic, or sulphuric acid, the water will be decomposed, and a current of electricity will flow from the zinc disc, which is the positive end, to the copper disc, which is the negative end of this little galvanic battery, as it may be called. When a number of these vessels, with their united discs of copper and zinc, are placed in a row, so that the zinc of one vessel is connected by a wire with the copper of another, we have a large and powerful battery, capable of giving severe shocks, and causing combustion, light, and chemical decomposition. In order that this battery may produce any of these effects, one wire passes from the last copper disc at one end, and termintes in a point A, while another wire passes from the last zinc disc at the other end, and terminates in a point B, A and B representing the ends of the wires. When the extremities A and B are in contact, or if the wire has no break at these into the current of aleatrinite mould hana |