s made ocean telegraphy an established success.

[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Siphon record. "Arrived yesterday"]

In another receiver, also of his design, the siphon recorder, he began
by taking advantage of the fact, observed long before by Bose, that a
charge of electricity stimulates the flow of a liquid. In its original
form the ink-well into which the siphon dipped was insulated and charged
to a high voltage by an influence-machine; the ink, powerfully repelled,
was spurted from the siphon point to a moving strip of paper beneath
(Fig. 62). It was afterward found better to use a delicate mechanical
shaker which throws out the ink in minute drops as the cable current
gently sways the siphon back and forth (Fig. 63).

Minute as the current is which suffices for cable telegraphy, it is
essential that the metallic circuit be not only unbroken, but unimpaired
throughout. No part of his duty has more severely taxed the resources of
the electrician than to discover the breaks and leaks in his ocean
cables. One of his methods is to pour electricity as it were, into a
broken wire, much as if it were a narrow tube, and estimate the length
of the wire (and consequently the distance from shore to the defect or
break) by the quantity of current required to fill it.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Henry M. Field, "History of the Atlantic Telegraph." New York:
Scribner, 1866.

[2] "A Century of Electricity." Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1887.

BELL'S TELEPHONIC RESEARCHES

[From "Bell's Electric Speaking Telephones," by George B. Prescott,
copyright by D Appleton & Co., New York, 1884]

In a lecture delivered before the Society of Telegraph Engineers, in
London, October 31, 1877, Prof. A. G. Bell gave a history of his
researches in telephony, together with the experiments that he was led
to undertake in his endeavours to produce a practical system of multiple
telegraphy, and to realize also the transmission of articulate speech.
After the usual introduction, Professor Bell said in part:

It is to-night my pleasure, as well as duty, to give you some account of
the telephonic researches in which I have been so long engaged. Many
years ago my attention was directed to the mechanism of speech by my
father, Alexander Melville Bell, of Edinburgh, who has made a life-long
study of the subject. Many of those present may recollect the invention
by my father of a means of representing, in a wonderfully accurate
manner, the