After four years in the South Morse returned to the North, hoping that larger opportunities would now be ready for him. The result was again failure. He devoted his time to huge historical paintings, and the public would neither buy them nor pay to see them when they were exhibited. Another blow fell upon him in 1825 when his wife died. At last he began to secure more sitters for his portraits, though his larger works still failed. He assisted in the organization of the National Academy of Design and became its first president. In 1829 he again sailed for Europe to spend three years in study in the galleries of Paris and Rome. Still he failed to attain any real success in his chosen work. He had made many friends and done much worthy work, yet there is little probability that he would have attained lasting fame as an artist even though his energies had not been turned to other interests. It was on the packet ship _Sully_, crossing the Atlantic from France, that Morse conceived the telegraph which was to prove the first great practical application of electricity. One noon as the passengers were gathered about the luncheon-table, a Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, exhibited an electro-magnet he had secured in Europe, and described certain electrical experiments he had seen while in Paris. He was asked concerning the speed of electricity through a wire, and replied that, according to Faraday, it was practically instantaneous. The discussion recalled to Morse his own collegiate studies in electricity, and he remarked that if the circuit were interrupted the current became visible, and that it occurred to him that these flashes might be used as a means of communication. The idea of using the current to carry messages became fixed in his mind, and he pondered, over it during the remaining weeks of the long, slow voyage. Doctor Jackson claimed, after Morse had perfected and established his telegraph, that the idea had been his own, and that Morse had secured it from him on board the _Sully_. But Doctor Jackson was not a practical man who either could or did put any ideas he may have had to practical use. At the most he seems to have simply started Morse's mind along a new train of thought. The idea of using the current as a carrier of messages, though it was new to Morse, had occurred to others earlier, as we have seen. But at the very outset Morse set himself to find a means by which he might make the current not only signal the message, but actually record it. Before he landed from the _Sully_ he had worked out sketches of a printing telegraph. In this the current actuated an electro-magnet on the end of which was a rod. This rod was to mark down dots and dashes on a moving tape of paper.