model, they, like Captain Pell, instantly recognized it as embodying the
principles explained to them on the ship.

Without going deeply into the scientific history of the successive steps
which led up to the invention of the telegraph, I shall quote a few
sentences 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,