Blcctric {Telegraph. 95 



learned heads of the Franklin Institute of 

 Philadelphia, the oldest scientific society in 

 America, advised that a semaphore system be 

 established between New York and Washing- 

 ton, consisting of forty towers with swinging 

 arms, the same as used in the days of Welling- 

 ton. Among other replies to the circular letter 

 of the secretary was one from Samuel F. B. 

 Morse. Morse was not a scientist or even an 

 inventor, at least not at that time. He was an 

 artist of some note. In 1832, while crossing 

 the ocean, Morse, in connection with one Dr. 

 Jackson of Boston, devised a code of tele- 

 graphic signs intended to be used in a chem- 

 ical telegraph system. 



Some years later Morse adapted Henry's 

 signal-instrument to a recorder, called the 

 Morse register, and this was the instrument 

 used in the early days of the Morse telegraph. 



What Morse seems to have really invented 

 was the register, which made embossed marks 

 on a strip of paper, and the code of dots and 

 dashes representing letters, now known as the 

 Morse alphabet, although this latter is ques- 

 tioned. Morse took his apparatus to Wash- 

 n and exhibited it to tin- members of Con- 

 gress in the year 1838, but it was four years 

 before a bill was passed that enabled him to 

 try the experiment between Baltimore and 

 .Washington. We will let him describe in his 



