And in 1860 a Republican president was elected. Was the long-predicted, and to most of Europe eagerly desired, disruption of the United States at hand? Was the break to be accomplished peacefully or in flame and wrath? The fading year of 1860 left the advancing world of democracy in panic over the danger to what had been its most successful stronghold. [For the next section of this general survey, see volume XVIII.] (1844) INVENTION OF THE TELEGRAPH, Alonzo B. Cornell After the experiments of Franklin that did so much to advance the study of electrical phenomena, and to suggest practical applications of electricity, physicists in all countries occupied themselves with investigations along lines marked out by the American philosopher. In 1749 Franklin devised the lightning-rod. But notwithstanding the labors of many investigators, it was more than fifty years before any other practical discovery or invention in electricity was brought into general use. The first great achievement of the kind was Morse's improvement of the electric telegraph. That Morse's fellow-countryman, Joseph Henry, chiefly prepared the way for that triumph, the following account, with just emphasis, demonstrates. Among the European scientists and inventors to whom both Henry and Morse were indebted was the French electrician, André Marie Ampère (1775-1836), whose name (ampère) has been given to the practical unit of electric-current strength. Ampère was the first and is the most famous investigator in electrodynamics. He also invented a telegraphic arrangement in which he used the magnetic needle and coil and the galvanic battery. Others, in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the nineteenth, devised similar arrangements. But no strictly electromagnetic apparatus for telegraphic signalling was put to successful use until 1836, when, in England, Charles Wheatstone, who is commonly regarded as the first inventor of practical electric telegraphy, constructed an apparatus whereby thirty signals were transmitted through nearly four miles of wire. From 1837 to 1843 he had as an associate William Fothergill Cooke, and the two worked together to develop the electric telegraph. They afterward quarrelled over their respective claims to credit, but in 1838-1841 telegraph lines secured by their patents were set up on the Great Western and two other English railways. Meanwhile other inventors were still working for the same results, in many parts of the world, and it has been significantly said that "the electric telegraph had, properly speaking, no inventor; it grew up little by little." Nevertheless with respect to the distinctive character of Morse's improvements, and his title to a peculiar place among those through whose labors the electric telegraph "grew," there can be no question.