n action at the Royal Society on the above
date. But it will be seen from our life of William Siemens that Soren
Hjorth, a Danish inventor, had forestalled them.

In 1870 the electric telegraph lines of the United Kingdom, worked by
different companies, were transferred to the Post Office, and placed
under Government control.

Wheatstone was knighted in 1868, after his completion of the automatic
telegraph. He had previously been made a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour. Some thirty-four distinctions and diplomas of home or foreign
societies bore witness to his scientific reputation. Since 1836 he
had been a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1873 he was appointed a
Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Sciences. The same year he
was awarded the Ampere Medal by the French Society for the Encouragement
of National Industry. In 1875 he was created an honorary member of the
Institution of Civil Engineers. He was a D.C.L. of Oxford and an LL.D.
of Cambridge.

While on a visit to Paris during the autumn of 1875, and engaged in
perfecting his receiving instrument for submarine cables, he caught a
cold, which produced inflammation of the lungs, an illness from which he
died in Paris, on October 19, 1875. A memorial service was held in the
Anglican Chapel, Paris, and attended by a deputation of the Academy. His
remains were taken to his home in Park Crescent, London, and buried in
Kensal Green.

CHAPTER III. SAMUEL MORSE.

Cooke and Wheatstone were the first to introduce a public telegraph
worked by electro-magnetism; but it had the disadvantage of not marking
down the message. There was still room for an instrument which would
leave a permanent record that might be read at leisure, and this was
the invention of Samuel Finley Breeze Morse. He was born at the foot of
Breed's Hill, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1791.
The place was a little over a mile from where Benjamin Franklin was
born, and the date was a little over a year after he died. His family
was of British origin. Anthony Morse, of Marlborough, in Wiltshire, had
emigrated to America in 1635, and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, He
and his descendants prospered. The grandfather of Morse was a member
of the Colonial and State Legislatures, and his father, Jedediah Morse,
D.D., was a well-known divine of his day, and the author of Morse's
AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY, as well as a compiler of a UNIVERSAL GAZETTEER. His
mother was Elizabeth A