In one of Addison's contributions to the Spectator (No. 241), we find the following curious instance of what may almost be considered as the foreshadowing of the electric telegraph. It is quoted from the writings of Strada, the celebrated Roman Jesuit, who died in 1649. In his "Prolusiones," a series of polished Latin essays upon rhetoric and literature, he gives an account of a chimerical correspondence between two friends, by the help of a certain loadstone, which had such virtue in it, that if touched by two several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to move, the other, though at ever so great a distance, moved at the same time and in the same manner. He tells us that two friends, being each of them possessed of these needles, made a kind of dial-plate, inscribing it with twenty-four letters—in the same manner as the hours of the day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. They then fixed one of the needles on each of these plates, in such a manner that it could move round without impediment so as to touch any of the twenty-four letters. Upon their separating from one another into distant countries, they agreed to withdraw themselves punctually into their closets at a certain hour of the day, and to converse with one another by means of this their invention. Accordingly, when they were some hundred miles asunder, each of them shut himself up in his closet at the time appointed, and immediately cast his eye upon his dial-plate. If he had a mind to write anything to his friend, he directed his needle to every letter that formed the words that he had occasion for—making a little pause at the end of every word or sentence, to avoid confusion. The friend, in the meanwhile, saw his own sympathetic needle moving of itself to every letter which that of his correspondent pointed at. By this means, they talked together across a whole continent, and conveyed their thoughts to one another, in an instant, over cities or mountains, seas or deserts.... In the meanwhile (adds the Essayist, playfully), if ever this invention should be revived, or put in practice, I would propose that upon the lovers' dial-plate there should be written, not only the twenty-four letters, but several entire words which have always a place in passionate epistles; as flames, darts, die, languish, absence, Cupid, heart, eyes, hang, drown—and the like. This would very much abridge the lover's pains in this way of writing a letter—as it would enable him to express the most useful and significant words with a single turn of the needle.