THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.--The word is Greek, meaning, literally, "to write from a distance." But long since, and before Morse's invention, it had come to mean the giving of any information, by any means, from afar. The existence of telegraphs, not electric, is as old as the need of them. The idea of quickness, speedy delivery, is involved. If time is not an object, men may go or send. The means used in telegraphing, in ancient and modern times, have been sound and sight. Anything that can be expressed so as to be read at a distance, and that conveys a meaning, is a telegram. [Footnote: This word is of American coinage, and first appeared in the _Albany Evening Journal_, in 1852. It avoids the use of two words, as "Telegraphic Message," or "Telegraphic Dispatch," and the ungrammatical use of "Telegraph," for a message by telegraph. The new word was at once adopted.] Our plains Indians used columns of smoke, or fires, and are the actual inventors of the _heliograph_, now so called, though formerly meaning the making of a picture by the aid of the sun--photography. The vessels of a squadron at sea have long used telegraphic signals. Some of the celebrated sentences of our history have been written by visual signals, such as "Hold the fort, for I am coming," "Don't give up the ship," etc. Order of showing, positions, and colors are arbitrarily made to mean certain words. The sinking of the "_Victoria_" in 1893, was brought about by the orders conveyed by marine signals. Bells and guns signal by sound. So does the modern electric telegraph, contrary to original design. It is all telegraphy, but it all required an agreed and very limited code, and comparative nearness. None of the means in ancient use were available for the multifarious uses of modern commerce.