ed to become a
Fellow of the Royal Society, and a few years later, in 1885 he received
the Royal Medal of the Society for his experiments, and especially
those of the microphone. In 1881 he represented the United Kingdom as a
Commissioner at the Paris International Exhibition of Electricity,
and was elected President of one of the sections of the International
Congress of Electricians. In 1886 he filled the office of President of
the Society of Telegraph Engineers and of Electricians.

The Hughes type-printer was a great mechanical invention, one of the
greatest in telegraphic science, for every organ of it was new, and had
to be fashioned out of chaos; an invention which stamped its author's
name indelibly into the history of telegraphy, and procured for him a
special fame; while the microphone is a discovery which places it on the
roll of investigators, and at the same time brings it to the knowledge
of the people. Two such achievements might well satisfy any scientific
ambition. Professor Hughes has enjoyed a most successful career.
Probably no inventor ever before received so many honours, or bore them
with greater modesty.

*****

APPENDIX.

I. CHARLES FERDINAND GAUSS.

CHARLES FERDINAND GAUSS was born at Braunschweig on April 30, 1777. His
father, George Dietrich, was a mason, who employed himself otherwise in
the hard winter months, and finally became cashier to a TODTENCASSE, or
burial fund. His mother Dorothy was the daughter of Christian Benze
of the village of Velpke, near Braunschweig, and a woman of talent,
industry, and wit, which her son appears to have inherited. The father
died in 1808 after his son had become distinguished. The mother lived to
the age of ninety-seven, but became totally blind. She preserved her low
Saxon dialect, her blue linen dress and simple country manners, to
the last, while living beside her son at the Observatory of Gottingen.
Frederic, her younger brother, was a damask weaver, but a man with a
natural turn for mathematics and mechanics.

When Gauss was a boy, his parents lived in a small house in the
Wendengrahen, on a canal which joined the Ocker, a stream flowing
through Braunschweig. The canal is now covered, and is the site of the
Wilhelmstrasse, but a tablet marks the house. When a child, Gauss used
to play on the bank of the canal, and falling in one day he was nearly
drowned. He learned to read by asking the letters from his friends, and
also by studying