Pasilalin sympathetic compass

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Benoît and Allix claimed that mating snails formed a subtle bond.

The Pasilalin-sympathetic compass , French Boussole pasilalinique sympathique (from the Greek πᾶν pas 'all-, total'; λαλιά lalia 'conversation'; and sympath [ et ] isch 'feeling together, standing in a feeling resonance', today ' empathic '), was a device from 1850 that was based on the mistaken idea that two snails would enter into a permanent, spatially unlimited telepathic connection when they mate : what one feels, it passes on to the other.

The "snail telegraph" was supposed to use this unauthorized property for the wireless transmission of letters. After a first, questionable test, the apparatus was not subjected to any further testing and was not further developed.

history

The thesis of a telepathic connection between snails comes from the first half of the 19th century and was propagated by the esotericists Jacques Toussaint Benoît and Biat-Chrétien. According to them, after sexual union, thanks to a special invisible fluid , snails would remain spatially indefinitely connected in resonance; for example, as soon as you touch one of the two snails by the antennae , the other would also feel the same and retract her antennae equally. It is a variant of the idea of animal magnetism, which was very popular in the 18th and 19th centuries .

The device, which speculation should have proven to be fact, consisted of two wooden boxes with a pane in which 24 zinc plates were set; Cloths soaked in copper sulphate (blue vitriol , a substance associated with the philosopher's stone ) framed the plates. Snails were fixed in the plates, each snail was assigned to one of the letters of the alphabet. In order to pass on a message, the telegraph operator of one of the boxes had to touch the snails letter by letter. From the corresponding reactions of the snails in the other box, the telegraph operator should then be able to read what had just been "typed" elsewhere.

On October 2, 1850, Benoît invited a financier and his journalist friend Jules Allix to check the functionality of his, as the name implies, "resonance compass for all conversations". Allix was convinced of the success of the test and wrote on 25/26. October 1850 in the newspaper La Presse excited about the new means of transmission based on the "  sympathie-galvano-magnétique-minérale-animal et adamique  " (German: "galvano-magnetic-mineral-animal and human sympathy") and the possibility of humanity to bring them closer together:

«La conversation que nous avons ici, ensemble, vous et moi, en famille, entre amis, le matin ou le soir, sur quelque sujet ou dans quelque intérêt que ce soit, peut se faire de même instantanément, à toutes les distances avec avantage de sécurité, d'exactitude, de commodité, d'économie, voilà tout! »

“The conversation that we have here together, you and I, with family, among friends, morning or evening, about any topic and for any occasion, can also take place simultaneously at all distances with the advantage of security and accuracy , the convenience, the economy, with just about everything! "

Allix also declared the device as a suitable alternative to wired telegraphy , which began during the 1840s and 1850s, which was still characterized by many technical difficulties. The financier, however, remained skeptical, as Benoit had been walking back and forth between the two wooden boxes, allegedly to check the equipment, and requested a second presentation with a more rigorous experimental set-up. However, Benoît did not appear on the agreed date; he is said to have died of mental confusion two years later. The Pasilalin sympathetic compass briefly attracted some attention. The French astronomer Camille Flammarion still remembered these snails decades later in his Mémoires , “  qui ont fort réjoui Paris  ” (German: “which had enormously amused Paris”).

See also

literature

  • [JT] Benoît, Biat-Chrétien: Communication universelle et instatanée de la pensée, à quelque distance que ce soit, a l'aide d'un apparail portativ, appelé boussole pasilalinique sympathique. (1850).

Historical secondary literature:

  • Edmond Tenier: Vojage à travers les Journaux: Escargots sympatiques . In: L'illustration, Journal universelle. N ° 4, Vol. XVI [Volume 16], J. Dubochet Verlag, 1850, pp. [274-] 275 ( Google Books, full view ).
  • Auguste Laforet: Les Pigeons-Messagers. In: Mémoires de L'Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Marseille. Volume 1870–1871, Académie de Marseille, 1871, p. 233 (full article p. 211–254; Google Books, full view in Google Book Search).
  • Sabine Baring-Gould : Historic Oddities and Strange Events. 1889 (first printing. New edition 2002, ISBN 978-0-543-94472-6 ).
  • Camille Flammarion : Mémoires biographiques et philosophiques d'un astronome , Paris 1912, pp. 483-484 ( eReader , bnf.fr).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to: Lijste van nieuw give away works betrekkelijk de art en de Wetenshap van den Ingenieur before de Leden van het Koninklijk institut van ingenieurs. Verlag Gebr. J. en H. Langenhuysen, 's Gravenhage [The Hague] 1851. Latest uitkommen werken C. in Frankrijk , Boeken , No. 142, S. LII [52] ( restricted preview in Google book search).