"It is well known to all who are conversant in electrical experiments, that the electric power may be propagated along a small wire, from one place to another, without being sensibly abated by the length of its progress. Let, then, a set of wires, equal in number to the letters of the alphabet, be extended horizontally between too given places, parallel to one another, and each of them about an inch distant from that next to it. At every twenty yards' end let them be fixed in glass, or jeweller's cement, to some firm body, both to prevent them from touching the earth, or any other non-electric, and from breaking by their own gravity. Let the electric gun-barrel be placed at right angles with the extremities of the wires, and about an inch below them; also let the wires be fixed in a solid piece of glass at six inches from the end; and let that part of them which reaches from the glass to the machine have sufficient spring and stiffness to recover its situation after having been brought in contact with the barrel. Close by the supporting glass let a ball be suspended from every wire, and about a sixth or an eighth of an inch below the ball place the letters of an alphabet, marked on bits of paper, or any other substance that may be light enough to rise to the electrified ball, and at the same time let it be so contrived that each of them may reassume its proper place when dropt. All things constructed as above, and the minute previously fixed, I begin the conversation with my distant friend in this manner:--Having set the electrical machine a-going, as in ordinary experiments, suppose I am to pronounce the word _sir_; with a piece of glass, or any other _electric per se_, I strike the wire _s_, so as to bring it in contact with the barrel, then _i_, then _r_, all in the same way; and my correspondent, almost in the same instant, observes these several characters rise in order to the electrified balls at his end of the wires. Thus I spell away as long as I think fit, and my correspondent, for the sake of memory, writes the characters as they rise, and may join or read them afterwards as often as he inclines. Upon a signal given, or from desire, I stop the machine, and taking up the pen, in my turn I write down whatever my friend at the other end strikes out.