looked out on the field of conquest. Some of them brought keener vision
than others. Some of them stood higher than others. But the genius of
invention had not recognized them. There was needed an inventor. Now what
sort of a want is this?

"There was required a rare combination of qualities and conditions. There
must be ingenuity in the adaptation of available means to desired ends;
there must be the genius to see through non-essentials to the fundamental
principle on which success depends; there must be a kind of skill in
manipulation; great patience and pertinacity; a certain measure of
culture, and the inventor of a recording telegraph must be capable of
being inspired by the grandeur of the thought of writing, figuratively
speaking, with a pen a thousand miles long--with the thought of a postal
system without the element of time. Moreover the person who is to be the
inventor must be free from the exactions of well-compensated, everyday,
absorbing duties--perhaps he must have had the final baptism of poverty.

"Now the inventor of the registering telegraph did not rise from the
perusal of any brilliant paper; he happened to be at leisure on
shipboard, ready to contribute and share in the after-dinner conversation
of a ship's cabin, when the occasion arose. Morse's electro-magnetic
telegraph was mainly an invention employing powers and agencies through
mechanical devices to produce a given end. It involved the combination of
the results of the labors of others with a succession of special
contrivances and some discoveries of the inventor himself. There was an
ideal whole almost at the outset, but involving great thought, and labor,
and patience, and invention to produce an art harmonious in its
organization and action."

After a voyage of over a month Morse reached home and landed at the foot
of Rector Street on November 15, 1832. His two brothers, Sidney and
Richard, met him on his arrival, and were told at once of his invention.
His brother Richard thus described their meeting:--

"Hardly had the usual greetings passed between us three brothers, and
while on our way to my house, before he informed us that he had made,
during his voyage, an important invention, which had occupied almost all
his attention on shipboard--one that would astonish the world and of the
success of which he was perfectly sanguine; that this invention was a
means of communicating intelligence by electricity, so that a message
could be wri