Item 1 - Letter from Fleeming Jenkin to Sir William Thomson

6 Duke Street, Adelphi.—Discusses the drafting of a patent for a telegraphic receiving instrument.

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Transcript

Decr 18. 1867.
6 Duke St Adelphi.

Dear Thomson

The date by which the ink recording patent must be completed is the 23d of January. but the drawings should be begun at once. We must clearly not trouble Varley any more, I am afraid he really is ill.

I will draw up a short specification of the mirror galvanometer as adapted for a speaking instrument and submit it to your criticism. I do not think the patent need be identical with the Newfoundland patent. I should propose to call the patent an improved form of telegraphic receiving instrument or some such title.

This would leave the use of a reflecting galvanometer quite free—in the States. If we do not do this I fear we may be defeated by the manufacture or import of instruments which we cannot keep out by establishing a custom house service of our own and that when men have once got the patent instmt they will say they may use it as they like and that the instruments are in common use for many purposes besides telegraphy so that even if we did get a verdict it would be for a merely nominal sum.

My idea of the true patent is as if the Morse having been the common telegraphic instmt and galvanometers or detectors in common use for testing, some one has found out that the common detector could be used as a single needle instmt.

We might have drawn up the following laconic patent. “I use the ordinary detector as a receiving instrument, the the letters of the alphabet being indicated by one or more deflections on each side of the zero point”. I apprehend this would have been a valuable and valid patent.

Yrs vy truly
Fleeming Jenkin