Baron Paul Julius De Reuter
1 Baron Paul Julius de Reuter By Paul H. Emden, F.R.S.L. IHE desire for news, to be informed of what is happening elsewhere is as old as civilization and the Jews, like other have been eager to learn. Thus, A people, always scattered over Europe and beyond, they have always carried on a busy correspon? dence with relatives, business connections and friends. By thismeans they sometimes obtained news of consequence in circles wider than their own, from abroad and, as happened occasionally in English history, were able to be of appreciable service to the Government of the country whose protection they enjoyed. Jews may therefore be said to have been by heredity, stretched over a score of centuries, specially equipped for the dissemination of news. About 1830 Karl Friedrich Gauss, a great physicist but a still greatermathematician, began in Goettingen, a Hanoverian university town, his electro-magnetic researches and three years later the first electric telegram could be sent from his laboratory to the one mile distant astronomical observatory. The event created, as might be expected, a considerable stir and among those duly impressed was a sixteen year old bank clerk at Goettingen, Israel Beer Josaphat who, having left school three years earlier, knew practi? cally nothing of electricity or physics. However, he made the acquaintance of the great scientist and itmay well be that he was enlightened as to the possibilities of the embryonic invention. Hitherto the collection and quick dissemination of news had been dependent on the homing instinct of carrier pigeons. Balzac inMonographie de la Presse Parisienne (1843) reveals2 how news from abroad was patched together.
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