DISCOURSE OF W. B. TAYLOR: NOTES. 381 



witness to those experiments, and to their eventual demonstration 

 and triumph." * 



Professor James Hall, (in the same year in which he was Presi- 

 dent of the American Association at its Albany meeting,) in a letter 

 addressed to Professor Henry, January 19, 1856, relates the circum- 

 stances of a visit to the Albany Academy in August, 1832, on which 

 occasion he was shown a long circuit of wire about the walls of a 

 larger upper room, "and at one termination of this, in the recess of 

 a window, a bell was fixed, while the other extremity was connected 

 with a galvanic apparatus. You showed us the manner in which 

 the bell could be made to ring by a current of electricity transmitted 

 through this wire; and you remarked that this method might be 

 adopted for giving signals by the ringing of a bell at the distance 

 of many miles from the point of its connection with the galvanic 

 apparatus. All the circumstances attending this visit to Albany 

 are fresh in my recollection ; and during the past years while so 

 much has been said respecting the invention of electric telegraphs, 

 I have often had occasion to mention the exhibition of your electric 

 telegraph in the Albany Academy, in 1832."f 



Professor Morse, who states that the idea of an electric telegraph 

 first occurred to him in October, 1832, commenced experimenting 

 on this conception in the latter part of 1835. The following is his 

 own account of his first experiments : 



"In the year 1835, 1 was appointed a professor in the New York 

 City University, and about the month of November of that year, I 

 occupied rooms in the University buildings. There I immediately 

 commenced with very limited means to experiment upon my inven- 

 tion. My first instrument was made up of an old picture or canvas 

 frame fastened to a table, the wheels of an old wooden clock moved 

 by a weight to carry the paper forward, three wooden drums upon 

 one of which the paper was wound and passed over the other two, 

 a wooden pendulum suspended to the top piece of the picture or 

 stretching frame and vibrating across the paper as it passed over 

 the center wooden drum, a pencil at the lower end of the pendulum 

 in contact with the paper, an electro-magnet fastened to a shelf 

 across the picture or stretching frame opposite to an armature made 

 fast to the pendulum, a type-rule and type for breaking the circuit 

 on an endless band (composed of carpet-binding) which passed over 

 two wooden rollers moved by a wooden crank and carried forward 

 by points projecting from the bottom of the rule downward into the 

 carpet-binding, a lever with a small weight on the upper side and a 



*" Commemorative Address": at Semi-Centennial Anniversary of Albany 

 Academy, June 23, 1863. Proceedings, etc. p. 48. 



4 Published in the SmitJisonian Report for 1857, p. 96. 



