Under caption “The First Idea of the Electric Telegraph,” the following appeared in the “Journal of the Franklin Institute,” Vol. XXI. 1851, p. 202: “In the number of the _Philosophical Magazine_ for May, 1850, I [N. S. Heineken] observe that Prof. Maunoir claims, for his friend Dr. Odier, the first idea of the electric telegraph. I herewith send you a translation of ‘How two people might communicate with each other at a distance by means of the magnetic needle,’ taken from a German work by Schwenter, entitled ‘Deliciæ Physico-Mathematicæ,’ and published at Nürnberg in 1636 ... upward of a century before the period alluded to by Prof. Maunoir. Indeed, Oersted’s grand discovery was alone wanting to perfect the telegraph in 1636. The idea, in fact, appears to have been entertained prior even to this date, for Schwenter himself quotes, at p. 346, from a _previous_ author.” This “previous author” is either Giambattista della Porta, mentioned at A.D. 1558, or Famianus Strada, who appears herein under the A.D. 1617 date. The passage from Dr. Louis Odier’s letter relative to an electric telegraph is given at A.D. 1773 (see J. J. Fahie, “A History of Electric Telegraphy to the Year 1837,” London, 1884, pp. 21–22). =A.D. 1600.=--Gilbert--Gilberd--Gylberde (William), of Colchester (1544–1603), physician to Queen Elizabeth and to James I of England, justly called by Poggendorff “The Galileo of Magnetism,” publishes his _“De magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno magnete tellure; Physiologia nova, plurimis et argumentis et experimentis demonstrata,”_ to which he had given “seventeen years of intense labour and research”[29] and which he dedicates “alone to the true philosophers, ingenuous minds, who not only in books but in things themselves look for knowledge,” and wherein the phenomena of electricity are first generalized and classified. This great work is subdivided into six books, which respectively treat of the loadstone, of magnetic movements (_coitio_), of direction (_directio_), of variation (_variatio_), of declination (_declinatio_), and of the great magnet, the earth[30] of circular movement (_revolutio_). BOOK I