t was evidently of some system of signs which could be
used to transmit intelligence, and he at once realized that nothing could
be simpler than a point or a dot, a line or dash, and a space, and a
combination of the three. Thus the first sketch shows the embryo of the
dot-and-dash alphabet, applied only to numbers at first, but afterwards
elaborated by Morse to represent all the letters of the alphabet.

Next he suggests a method by which these signs may be recorded
permanently, evidently by chemical decomposition on a strip of paper
passed along over two rollers. He then shows a message which could be
sent by this means, interspersed with ideas for insulating the wires in
tubes or pipes. And here I want to call attention to a point which has
never, to my knowledge, been noticed before. In the message, which, in
pursuance of his first idea, adhered to by him for several years, was to
be sent by means of numbers, every word is numbered conventionally except
the proper name "Cuvier," and for this he put a number for each letter.
How this was to be indicated was not made clear, but it is evident that
he saw at once that all proper names could not be numbered; that some
other means must be employed to indicate them; in other words that each
letter of the alphabet must have its own sign. Whether at that early
period he had actually devised any form of alphabet does not appear,
although some of the depositions of his fellow passengers would indicate
that he had. He himself put its invention at a date a few years after
this, and it has been bitterly contested that he did not invent it at
all. I shall prove, in the proper place, that he did, but I think it is
proved that it must have been thought of even at the early date of 1832,
and, at all events, the dot-and-dash as the basis of a conventional code
were original with Morse and were quite different from any other form of
code devised by others.

The next drawing of a magnet lifting sixty pounds shows that Morse was
familiar with the discoveries of Arago, Davy, and Sturgeon in
electro-magnetism, but what application of them was to be made is not
explained.

The last sketch is to me the most important of all, for it embodies the
principle of the receiving magnet which is universally used at the
present day. The weak permanent magnet has been replaced by a spring, but
the electro-magnet still attracts the lever and produces the dots and
dashes of the alphabet; and this, simp