226 SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE. 



arrest the current, he conceived that some device 

 could be found for compelling it to manifest it- 

 self by this intermittent action, and produce a 

 record. 



" 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 trans- 

 mitted along a wire. He believed that the battery 

 current could be made, through an electro-magnet, 

 to produce physical effects at a distance. He saw 

 in his mind's e}*e 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. 

 First, he caused a continuous ribbon or strip of 

 paper to move under a pencil by clock-work, that 

 could be wound up. The paper moved horizontally. 

 The pencil moved only up and down ; when resting 

 on the paper it made a mark if for an instant 

 only, a dot ; if for a longer time, a line. When 

 lifted from the paper it left a blank. . . . The 

 grandeur of this wonderful alphabet of dots, lines, 

 and spaces has not been fully appreciated. . . . 



