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At the time when Soemmerring became a member of the Academy of Sciences at Munich, in 1805, there was attached to the Russian mission in that capital the Baron Pawel Lwowitch Schilling (of Canstadt). About a year after the invention of the telegraph, on the 13th of August 1810, Schilling saw experiments performed with it. He was so forcibly struck with the probability of a very great usefulness of the invention, that from that day galvanism and its applications became one of his favourite studies. He brought many persons, from Russia as well as from other countries, to Soemmerring, that they might see his telegraph. The Russian Minister, Prince Bariatinsky, repeatedly visited Soemmerring, and invited him to his house.
Ten days after Baron Schilling’s first taking notice of the telegraph, on the 23rd of August, 1810, Soemmerring succeeded in inventing a contrivance for sounding an alarum, which answered perfectly well. He made the gas, rising in small bubbles from two of the wire points in the water, collect under a sort of inverted glass spoon at the end of a long lever, which, rising, made a second, bent, lever in the opposite direction, on the same axle, descend and throw off a little perforated leaden ball, stuck lightly
