The description is best given in his own words taken from the original Latin (Stradæ, “Prol. Acad.,” Oxoniæ, 1662, “Magnes cur ferrum aut aurum trahat,” pp. 326–335): “... If you wish your distant friend, to whom no letter can come, to learn something, take a disc or dial, and write round the edge of it the letters of the alphabet in the order in which children learn them, and, in the centre, place horizontally a rod, which has touched a magnet, so that it may move and indicate whatever letter you wish. Then a similar dial being in the possession of your friend, if you desire privately to speak to the friend whom some share of the earth holds far from you, lay your hand on the globe, and turn the movable iron as you see disposed along the margin of all the letters which are required for the words. Hither and thither turn the style and touch the letters, now this one, and now that.... Wonderful to relate, the far-distant friend sees the voluble iron tremble without the touch of any person, and run now hither, now thither; conscious he bends over it and marks the teaching of the rod. When he sees the rod stand still, he, in his turn, if he thinks there is anything to be answered, in like manner, by touching the various letters, writes it back to his friend....” REFERENCES.--“The Student; or, Oxford and Cambridge Misc.,” 1750, Vol. I. p. 354; Abbé Moigno’s “Traité de Tel. Elec.,” p. 58; Addison (Joseph), “Spectator” for December 6, 1711, No. 241 (p. 273, Vol. II. London ed., 1854); the “Guardian” for 1713, No. 119, and “Nature,” Vol. XVI. pp. 268, 269. Also “Academy and Literature” of January 7, 1905. Zachary Grey, in 1744 edition of Butler’s “Hudibras,” quotes from the “Guardian.” =A.D. 1620.=--Bacon (Sir Francis), by many considered the greatest of English philosophers and philosophical writers (1561–1626), who was knighted in 1603, became Earl of Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Albans in 1620, produces the masterpiece of his genius, the “Novum Organum,” after having twelve times copied and revised it. The last-named work, observes Macaulay, “takes in at once all the domains of science--all the past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the coming age.” Prof. Playfair says of it that “the power and compass of the mind which could form such a plan beforehand, and trace not merely the outline but many of the most minute ramifications of sciences which did not yet exist, must be an object of admiration to all succeeding ages.”