w (very few as compared with the mass
who now are learned in the facts) who were in the habit of reading the
scientific journals may have read of the thought of an electric telegraph
about the year 1832, and even of Ronald's, and Betancourt's, and Salva's,
and Lomond's impracticable schemes previously, and have forgotten them
again, with thousands of other dreams, as the ingenious ideas of
visionary men; ideas so visionary as to be considered palpably
impracticable, declared to be so, indeed, by Barlow, a scientific man of
high standing and character; yet the mass of the scientific as well as
the general public were ignorant even of the attempts that had been made.
The fact of any of them having been published in some magazine at the
time, whose circulation may be two or three thousand, and which was soon
virtually lost amid the shelves of immense libraries, does not militate
against the assertion that the world was ignorant of the fact. We can
show conclusively the existence of this ignorance respecting telegraphs
at the time of the invention of Morse's telegraph."

The rest of this note (evidently written for publication) is missing, but
enough remains to prove the point.

Thus we have seen that the idea of his telegraph came to Morse as a
sudden inspiration and that he was quite ignorant of the fact that others
had thought of using electricity to convey intelligence to a distance.
Mr. Prime in his biography says: "Of all the great inventions that have
made their authors immortal and conferred enduring benefit upon mankind,
no one was so completely grasped at its inception as this."

One of his fellow passengers, J. Francis Fisher, Esq., counsellor-at-law
of Philadelphia, gave the following testimony at Morse's request:--

"In the fall of the year 1832 I returned from Europe as a passenger with
Mr. Morse in the ship Sully, Captain Pell master. During the voyage the
subject of an electric telegraph was one of frequent conversation. Mr.
Morse was most constant in pursuing it, and _alone_ the one who seemed
disposed to reduce it to a practical test, and I recollect that, for this
purpose, he devised a _system of signs for letters_ to be indicated and
marked by a quick succession of strokes or shocks of the galvanic
current, and I am sure of the fact that it was deemed by Mr. Morse
perfectly competent to effect the result stated. I did not suppose that
any other person on board the ship claimed any merit in the inventio