Nothing, however, in this document authorizes the belief that Charles Marshall ever realized his idea, so we must proceed to 1774 to find Lesage, of Geneva, constructing a telegraph that was based upon the principle indicated twenty years before in the letter of Renfrew. The apparatus that Lesage devised (Fig. 1) was composed of 24 wires insulated from one another by a non conducting material. Each of these wires corresponded to a small pith ball suspended by a thread. On putting an electric machine in communication with such or such a one of these wires, the ball of the corresponding electrometer was repelled, and the motion signaled the letter that it was desired to transmit. Not content with having realized an electric telegraph upon a small scale, Lesage thought of applying it to longer distances. "Let us conceive," said he in a letter written June 22, 1782, to Mr. Prevost, of Geneva, "a subterranean pipe of enameled clay, whose cavity at about every six feet is separated by partitions of the same material, or of glass, containing twenty-four apertures in order to give passage to as many brass wires as these diaphragms are to sustain and keep separated. At each extremity of this pipe are twenty-four wires that deviate from one another horizontally, and that are arranged like the keys of a clavichord; and, above this row of wire ends, are distinctly traced the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, while beneath there is a table covered with twenty-four small pieces of gold-leaf or other easily attractable and quite visible bodies." Lesage had thought of offering his secret to Frederick the Great; but he did not do so, however, and his telegraph remained in the state of a curious cabinet experiment. He had, nevertheless, opened the way, and, dating from that epoch, we meet with a certain number of attempts at electrostatic telegraphy. [1] [Footnote 1: Advantage has been taken of a letter from Alexander Volta to Prof. Barletti (dated 1777), indicating the possibility of firing his electric pistol from a great distance, to attribute to him a part in the invention of the telegraph. We have not shared in this opinion, which appears to us erroneous, since Volta, while indicating the possibility above stated, does not speak of applying such a fact to telegraphy.] The first in date is that of Lemond, which is spoken of by Arthur Young (October 16, 1787), in his _Voyage Agronomique en France_: