ences from a long paper written by the late Professor E.N. Horsford,
of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and included in Mr. Prime's biography:--

"What was needed to the _original conception_ of the Morse recording
telegraph?

"1. A knowledge that soft wire, bent in the form of a horseshoe, could be
magnetized by sending a galvanic current through a coil wound round the
iron, and that it would lose its magnetism when the current was
suspended.

"2. A knowledge that such a magnet had been made to lift and drop masses
of iron of considerable weight.

"3. A knowledge, or a belief, that the galvanic current could be
transmitted through wires of great length.

"These were all. Now comes the conception of devices for employing an
agent which could produce reciprocal motion to effect registration, and
the invention of an alphabet. In order to this invention it must be seen
how up and down--reciprocal--motion could be produced by the opening and
closing of the circuit. Into this simple band of vertical tracery of
paths in space must be thrown the shuttle of time and a ribbon of paper.
It must be seen how a lever-pen, alternately dropping upon and rising at
defined intervals from a fillet of paper moved by independent clock-work,
would produce the fabric of the alphabet and writing and printing.

"Was there anything required to produce these results which was not known
to Morse?...

"He knew, for he had witnessed it years before, that, by means of a
battery and an electro-magnet, reciprocal motion could be produced. He
knew that the force which produced it could be transmitted along a wire.
He _believed_ that the battery current could be made, through an
electro-magnet, to produce physical results at a _distance_. He saw in
his mind's eye the existence of an agent and a medium by which reciprocal
motion could be not only produced but controlled at a distance. The
question that addressed itself to him at the outset was, naturally, this:
'How can I make use of the simple up-and-down motion of opening and
closing a circuit to write an intelligible message at one end of a wire,
and at the same time print it at the other?'... Like many a kindred work
of genius it was in nothing more wonderful than in its simplicity.... Not
one of the brilliant scientific men who have attached their names to the
history of electro-magnetism had brought the means to produce the
practical registering telegraph. Some of them had ascended the tower that