The Story of the Telegraph in Indi

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. PHILOSOPHICAL EXPERIMENTS. Preliminary Observations. It may be premised, that perhaps there is no part of the world under civilised rule which displays such a splendid field for telegraphic operations as India. It possesses many advantages commercially, theoretically, and practically?indeed, most of the elements essential to success are unusually predominant. On the other hand, the counterbalancing disadvantages are easily overcome. Yet, notwithstanding these highly favourable auspices, there is no part of the world which reveals such unexpected and incongruous issues; nor is there any country in which such diverse views have been entertained on telegraphic science. In the voluminous Government records will be found opinions and declarations at variance with the discoveries and experience of Western philosophy and advancement. Nevertheless, the substance of this antagonism must be measured by the result. That result is failure, as complete as it is deplorable; thus further establishing the truth, if it needed it, that the carefully determined laws and fundamental principles of science cannot be deviated from with impunity. Instruments. This subject has been more or less discussed throughout various reports, and, without going into any technical or mechanical detail, which would be more befitting a scientific dissertation, attention will be directed to one or two salient points of a general and easily intelligible character. It will be instructive to observe how light will sometimes gradually dawn upon the mind, and how opinions, when not based on sound deductions, will change according to time and circumstances. In paragraph 56 of the Records of the Bengal Government, No. VII., will be found the following statement: I accordingly tried and dismissed...