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When we take into account the number of vessels lost by mistaking one lighthouse for another, the value of this proposal becomes apparent. Mr Babbage shews, that bell-strokes might be employed to announce the number of a beacon in foggy weather; and he believes that the time is not far distant when buoys will also be indicated by a light.
The flower-scented breeze and the rumbling of the river persisted long after the valley lay behind and above, but these failed at length in the close air of the huge abutting walls. The light grew thick, the stones cracked like deep bell-strokes; the voices of man and girl had a hollow sound and echo.
Experiments made by the engineers of the French Lighthouse Establishment, in 1861-62, showed that the range of bell-sounds can be increased with the rapidity of the bell-strokes, and that the relative distances for 15, 25, and 60 bell-strokes a minute were in the ratio of 1, 1-14/100, and 1-29/100.
But I placed my chair in such a position that while still sitting in it I could keep my eye on the clock, and as the hands crept round its face, marking first three and then four o'clock, I strained my listening powers to their utmost in the hope that those elusive bell-strokes might again come stealing across the sea to me, but without result.
Hark! in the next room who spoke so clear and emphatic? Good Heaven! it is he! it is that very lump of bashfulness and phlegm which for weeks has done nothing but eat when you were by, and now rolls out these words like bell-strokes. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.
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