Alonzo B. Cornell, son of the founder of Cornell University, at one time Governor of New York, was intimately connected with electrical and telegraphic affairs for many years; therefore on the subject here presented he speaks with professional authority. His father was the first builder of the Morse telegraphs. * * * * * During the early years of the nineteenth century but slight advance was made in the development of electrical science, although there were many persons both here and abroad engaged in experimental work, and there was considerable increase of literature bearing upon the subject. It was reserved for another illustrious American to accomplish the next important and decisive step in the pathway of progress. In 1828 Joseph Henry, then professor of physics at the Albany Academy, afterward a professor at Princeton, and subsequently for many years secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, made the highly important discovery that by winding a plain iron core with many layers of insulated wire, through which the electric current was passed, he could at pleasure charge and discharge the iron core with magnetic power. Thus Henry produced the electromagnet which was the beginning of the mastery by man of the subtle fluid. He also discovered that the intensity and power of the electric current were materially augmented by increasing the number of the series of battery plates without increasing the quantity of metal used in their construction. These discoveries of Henry were, beyond all question, the most important in real and intrinsic value ever made in the progress of electric science, as they form the solid basis upon which all subsequent inventors have been enabled to accomplish successful results in their various fields of endeavor. It is conceded by all familiar with the history of electrical progress that the name of Professor Joseph Henry is to be honored and cherished as one of the very foremost of scientific discoverers of any age or country, and it must remain a cause of sincere and permanent regret that of all the fabulous wealth that has resulted from the advancement of electrical science, this modest and unselfish inventor should have passed hence without ever having realized any substantial reward for his great work. Not only so, but he was never awarded the appropriate acknowledgment to which he was so eminently entitled for the inestimable benefits his discoveries conferred upon his countrymen and upon the world at large.