The Solar-Powered Telegraph

The year was 1859 and, nearly six decades after the creation of Volta's battery, humans were really starting to get the hang of this electricity thing. Alternating current and low-loss power transmission lines were still a long way off, but the foundations of a communication infrastructure had emerged as telegraph cables began to crisscross the globe.Momentous as this was, our understanding of the fundamental principles which enabled it was patchy, to say the least. Although Ampere had written h...