By
encircling each balanced needle with an alphabet, the sympathetic
telegraph was obtained. Although based on error, and opposed by Cabeus
and others, this fascinating notion continued to crop up even to the
days of Addison. It was a prophetic shadow of the coming invention. In
the SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA, published in 1665, Joseph Glanvil wrote, 'to
confer at the distance of the Indies by sympathetic conveyances may be
as usual to future times as to us in literary correspondence.' [The
Rosicrucians also believed that if two persons transplanted pieces of
their flesh into each other, and tattooed the grafts with letters, a
sympathetic telegraph could be established by pricking the letters.]
Dr. Gilbert, physician to Queen Elizabeth, by his systematic researches,
discovered the magnetism of the earth, and laid the foundations of the
modern science of electricity and magnetism. Otto von Guericke,
burgomaster of Magdeburg, invented the electrical machine for generating
large quantities of the electric fire. Stephen Gray, a pensioner of the
Charterhouse, conveyed the fire to a distance along a line of pack
thread, and showed that some bodies conducted electricity, while others
insulated it. Dufay proved that there were two qualities of
electricity, now called positive and negative, and that each kind
repelled the like, but attracted the unlike.
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