one and the same corridor. In each chamber, against the partition that
separated it from the corridor, there was a small bracket, and upon the
latter, and very near the wall, there was a wooden dial supported on a
standard, but in no wise permanently fixed upon the bracket. Each dial
carried a needle, and each circumference was inscribed with twenty-five
letters of the alphabet. The experiment that was performed with these
dials consisted in placing the needle upon a letter in one of the
chambers, when the needle of the other dial stopped at the same letter,
thus making it possible to transmit words and even sentences. As for the
means of communication between the two apparatus, that was very simple:
One of the two dials always served as a transmitter, and the other as a
receiver. The needle of the transmitter carried along in its motion
a pretty powerful magnet, which was concealed in the dial, and which
reacted through the partition upon a very light magnetized needle that
followed its motions, and indicated upon an auxiliary dial, to a person
hidden in the corridor, the letter on which the first needle had been
placed. This person at once stepped over to the partition corresponding
to the receiver, where another auxiliary dial permitted him to properly
direct at a distance the very movable needle of the receiver. Everything
depended, as will be seen, upon the use of the magnet, and upon a deceit
that perfectly accorded with Comus' profession. There is, then, little
thought in our opinion that if the latter's apparatus was not exactly
the one Guyot describes, it was based upon some analogous artifice.

Jean Alexandre's telegraph appears to have borne much analogy with
Comus'. Its inventor operated it in 1802 before the prefect of
Indre-et-Loire. As a consequence of a report addressed by the prefect of
Vienne to Chaptal, and in which, moreover, the apparatus in question was
compared to Comus', Alexandre was ordered to Paris. There he refused to
explain upon what principle his invention was based, and declared that