came to England, and in February, 1837, having consulted Faraday and Dr. Roget on the construction of the electric-magnet employed in a part of his apparatus, the latter gentleman advised him to apply to Professor Wheatstone. ... The result of the meeting of Cooke and Wheatstone was that they resolved to unite their several discoveries; and in the month of May 1837, they took out their first patent 'for improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric currents transmitted through metallic circuits.' ... By-and-by, as might probably have been anticipated, difficulties arose between Cooke and Wheatstone, as to whom the main credit of introducing the Electric Telegraph into England was due. Mr. Cooke accused Wheatstone (with a certain amount of justice, it should seem) of entirely ignoring his claims; and in doing so Mr. Cooke appears to have rather exaggerated his own services. Most will readily agree to the wise words of Mr. Sabine: "It was once a popular fallacy in England that Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone were the original inventors of the Electric Telegraph. The Electric Telegraph had, properly speaking, no inventor; it grew up as we have seen little by little." _H. J. Nicoll, Great Movements, pages 424-429._ "In the latter part of the year 1832, Samuel F. B. Morse, an American artist, while on a voyage from France to the United States, conceived the idea of an electromagnetic telegraph which should consist of the following parts, viz: A single circuit of conductors from some suitable generator of electricity; a system of signs, consisting of dots or points and spaces to represent numerals; a method of causing the electricity to mark or imprint these signs upon a strip or ribbon of paper by the mechanical action of an electro-magnet operating upon the paper by means of a lever, armed at one end with a pen or pencil; and a method of moving the paper ribbon at a uniform rate by means of clock-work to receive the characters. ... In the autumn of the year 1835 he constructed the first rude working model of his invention. ... The first public exhibition ... was on the 2d of September, 1837, on which occasion the marking was successfully effected through one third of a mile of wire. Immediately afterwards a recording instrument was constructed ... which was subsequently employed upon the first experimental line between Washington and Baltimore. This line was constructed in 1843-44 under an appropriation by Congress, and was completed by May of the latter year. On the 27th of that month the first despatch was transmitted from Washington to Baltimore. ... The experimental line was originally constructed with two wires, as Morse was not at that time acquainted with the discovery of Steinheil, that the earth might be used to complete the circuit. {774}