22 



Annual Address. 



public lecture in the Academy which was largely attended 

 by our citizens, he exhibited his new apparatus and showed 

 how a magnetic power capable of raising a weight of several 

 thousand pounds could be instantaneously developed and 

 as instantaneously terminated, at the -pleasure of the ope- 

 rator. He was also the first to show, how the great power 

 thus developed, could be transmitted and applied at a very 

 distant point. The scientific facts thus established by him 

 were : 1st. That in order to obtain the projectile force requi- 

 site to transmit the power through a long circuit so as to 

 produce available mechanical results at a great distance, 

 a galvanic battery of a great number of plates, known as 

 an intensity battery, should be employed. 2d. That the 

 magnet connected with it, should be wound with a single 

 long wire with many turns : and, 3d. That by these means, 

 a bar of soft iron might be magnetized at a very distant 

 point ; and he also distinctly pointed out and illustrated 

 the application of these facts to the transmission of signals. 

 These discoveries made the magnetic telegraph at once 

 practicable. Many of us will remember the intense inte- 

 rest with which in the years 1830, 31, and 32, we regarded 

 the long coils of wire more than a mile in length, running 

 circuit upon circuit, around the walls of one of the rooms 

 in the Academy, which had been placed there by him to 

 illustrate the fact that a galvanic current could be thus 

 instantaneously projected through its whole length so as 

 to excite a magnet placed at the further extremity of the 

 line, and thus move a steel bar so as to strike a bell. In a 

 scientific point of view, this was a complete demonstration 

 and fulfillment of all that was required for the magnetic 

 telegraph. The science of that wonderful discovery was 

 complete, but it still needed a suitable and convenient in- 

 strument for its practical application, and this was soon 

 supplied by the mechanical and inventive genius of Morse, 

 who had been long engaged in the work, but had hitherto 



