Catalogue 38, Part 3 - Jeremy Norman's HistoryofScience.com

et; instead of hands, each clock had a rotating disk
with a notch cut into it so that only one letter on the
clock face was visible at a time (Standage 1998, 19).
Ronalds placed one clock at each end of eight miles of
insulated wire that he had laid down in his garden, and
used electrical impulses to transmit signals between
them. He wrote to Lord Melville of the British Admiralty
offering to demonstrate his telegraph, but was
rejected: John Barrow, secretary to the admiralty, wrote
back to Ronalds saying that “telegraphs of any kind are
now [after the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars]
totally unnecessary, and that no other than the one
now in use [a semaphore telegraph] will be adopted”
(quoted in DNB). Ronalds did not pursue his telegraphy
venture any further, but left a record of it in his
Descriptions of an Electric Telegraph and of Some
Other Electrical Apparatus (1823; reprinted in 1871 at
the suggestion of Latimer Clark). It was left to Charles
Wheatstone and William Fothergill Cooke, both of
whom knew of Ronalds’s experiments, to develop the
first telegraph adopted for public use in Britain in
1845.
In 1871, in response to a petition submitted the previous
year to Prime Minister William Gladstone, Ronalds
received a knighthood for his contribution to
telegraphy. His letter to Clark expresses his gratitude
for this honor and for Clark’s part in it:
Your kind congratulations are peculiarly
esteemed; for I have every reason to believe that
your expressions of approbation &c. of my humble
labours in Electro-Telegraphy have been influential
in Her Majesty’s gracious act in my behalf.
I believe it is almost needless to tell you that the
honour conferred is much less valued by me than
the testimony it helps to afford to the validity of
my early labours in the matter. . . . “
Origins of Cyberspace 187. 40745
“Resurrection Men”
93. Royal College of Surgeons. Anatomy.
Copy of a letter from the Council of the Royal
College of Surgeons in London, to Viscount Melbourne;
dated 10 December 1831. Folio. 3pp.
[London:] House of Commons, 17 December
1831. 333 x 208 mm. Disbound, gutter margin a
little frayed. Light toning but very good. $950
First Edition. On December 5, 1831, the notorious
London “resurrection men” John Bishop and
Thomas Williams were executed for the murder of an
itinerant fourteen-year-old (known only as the “Italian
Boy”), whose corpse they had then attempted to sell to
the anatomical demonstrator at King’s College. Five
days later, the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons—whose
members included such luminaries as
Astley Cooper, William Lawrence, Benjamin Collins
Brodie, Charles Bell and Benjamin Travers—sent the
present letter to Viscount Melbourne, the British
Home Secretary, urging reform of the antiquated British
laws governing procurement and possession of
cadavers for dissection in medical schools. The work is
82