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The Invention of the Electric Telegraph

A packet-ship, named the Sully, was slowly making its way across the ocean from Havre to New York. Among the passengers was a New York artist, named Samuel F. B. Morse, who had been studying painting in Europe, and was on his way home. He had once been a student at Yale College, where he had become much interested in chemistry and other sciences.

In the cabin, one day, the passengers began talking about improvements in electricity. One of them mentioned that Franklin had sent a current through several miles of wire, with no loss of time between the touch at one end and the spark at the other; also that recent experiments in Paris had proved conclusively that a current went almost instantaneously through a great length of wire run in circles around the walls of a large apartment.