Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1875-04-28
osc instantly formed absorbed his

mechanical. In his early youth an(
ripper manhood he had sought on
many inventions. His name had long
been enrolled among inventors in the
Patent Office of the United States.--
Patience, perseverance, and faith
were hereditary traits OF his character.
He was now forty,one years old.
The mechanism BY which the result
would be reached was to be wrought
out by slow and laborious thought and
experiment, but the grandeur of that
result broke upon him as clearly and
fully as if it had been vision from
heaven. Difficulties afterward arose
in his path, to be surmounted or re
moved by toilsome and painful pro-
cesses for it is the order of Nature
that birth-th roes should bear some
proportion TO the greatness of the
birth. But in the first hour of con
ception, when his soul was all aglow
with the discovery, he saw the end
from the beginning. The current of
electricity passes instantaneously to
any distance along a wire the cur
rent being interrupted, spark ap-
pears. The spark shall be one sign ;
its absence another the time of its
absence another Here are three
signs to be combined into the repres-
entation Of figures or letters. They
can be made to form an alphabet. -
Words may thus be indicated. A
telegraph, an instrument to record at
q distance, will be the result. Con-
tinents shall be crossed. This great
and wide sea shall be no barrier
of 1t will 90 ten miles without stop
ping" he said, II can make it 90
around the globe"
OF all the great inventions that have
made their authors immortal, and COLI
ferred enduring benefit upon mankind,
no one was so completely grasped at
its inception as this. His little note
or scratch book was always at hand,
in which he made sketches Of objects
that met his eye, or of images formed
in his mind. Scores of these books
are now in existence, in which his
early and later pencilings are preserv-
ed. As he sat upon the deck after the
conversation at dinner, he drew from
his pocket one of these books, and be-
gan to make marks to represent let
tiers and figures to be produced by the
agency of electricity at a distance from
the place of action. First, he ar
ranged ten dots and lines so as to
represent figures referring to Words
Next, he drew the wires in tubes
Then came the magnets, and by-and-by
cog-rules, to be used in regulating the
power. In the course Of q few days
his book presented several pages,
which are reproduced lin the volume,
showing the first marks ever made in
the invention Of the Telegraph.
He wrought necessarily that day,
and sleep forsook him in his birth that
night. His mind was on fire. In a
few days he submitted these rough
drafts to Mr., Rives, who suggested
various difficulties. But Mr.. Morse
was ready with solution. Mr.. Fish
er states that Mr.. Morse illustrated to
him his system of signs for letters, to
be indicated by quick succession Of
strokes or shock of the galvanic cur
rent, to be carried along upon single
wire. After several sleepless nights,
nights, while his mind was in labor
with the subject, he announced it at
the breakfast table, and explained the
process by which he proposed to ac-
complish it. He then exhibited the
drawing of the instrument by which
he would do the work, and so COM
pletely had he mastered all the details,
that five years afterward, when a
model of this instrument was construc.
ted, it was instantly recognized as the
one he had devised and drawn in his
sketch-book, and exhibited to his TEL
low-passengers on the ship.
Captain Pell stated, under oath,
that when he saw the instrument,
September 9th, 1887. he recognized
in it the same mechanical principles
and arrangements which he had heard
Mr.. Morse explain on board of the
Sully in 1882. Captain Pell added {:
Before the vessel was in port, Mr..
Morse addressed me in these words {:
well, captain, should you hear of the
telegraph, one of these days, as the
wonder of the world, remember the
4, -