A Contemporary of Such Important Figures as I. Life of Salva

A contemporary of such important figures as Laplace, Coulomb, Herschel, Jefferson, Kant and Betancourt, the Spaniard Francisco Salva y Campillo (17511828) was a prominent late Enlightenment scientist who dedicated his whole life to researching on different topics related to diverse fields of knowledge by applying scientific method. Five years before Samuel Thomas von Sómmering (17551830) demonstrated his electrochemical telegraph to the Munich Academy of Sciences, Salva proposed a very innovative electric telegraph based on two elements: on the one hand, the use of a Volta's pile to generate an electric current and, on the other hand, the electrolytic decomposition of water to detect such a current flow. Salva reported his electric telegraph to the Barce lona Academy of Sciences, Spain, on February 22, 1804, leaving his thoughts written in a not very well-known paper titled: "Second report about galvanism as applied to telegraphy."