ABSTRACT
Be it by sonorous impulses through linear conductors, such as in the Enchanted Lyre, or by electrical signals through telegraph cables, the realization of long-distance communication remained central to Charles Wheatstone’s research ambitions throughout the 1820s and 1830s. Beginning in 1834, Wheatstone began working on the transmission of electricity through copper wire, the same year in which he became Professor of Experimental Philosophy at the newly established King’s College London. Oracular responses were delivered by a speaking head at Lesbos; it predicted, though in equivocal terms, the violent death of Cyrus the Great, which terminated his expedition against the Scythians. This was the head of Orpheus. In the thirteenth century Albertus Magnus, the extent of whose knowledge was astonishing for the age in which he lived, made a head of earthenware.
