All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

2 All About Inventions whom the villa belonged, but he could not gratify their whims. All that he could say was that his son, a young man of twenty-one, was deeply interested in electricity. Some new idea or other had occurred to him, and he had set up these poles and tin boxes to prove or disprove, from practical experiment, certain theories which he had evolved. As for the young investigator, he pursued his studies and investigations unperturbed. Throughout the day he was seen dodging among these poles, making some adjustment to this box, and altering the position of that. At night the neighbours observed that the lights in the outbuilding burned to a late hour. Evidently the young man was hot upon the trail of something, judging from the diligence with which he laboured, and the long hours which he toiled. After some weeks probing and moving among these poles and buildings the young Italian wrote to one of the foremost British telegraphic authorities com- municating the results of his observations and labour. The young correspondent was quite unknown to the expert, but the letter aroused the latter’s interest to an extreme degree. He himself had been conducting some inquiries in the selfsame direction, but the in- dustrious Italian youth evidently was able to reveal something of considerable moment, because the elec- trical expert replied without delay. The correspondence was continued for a week or two, and then the British electrician extended an in- vitation to his Italian enthusiast to come to London. This was the opportunity for which the young ex- perimenter had been waiting. He accepted it with ■MH