“In 1826, the lectures, before the New York Atheneum, of Dr. J. F. Dana, who was my particular friend, gave to me the first knowledge ever possessed of electro magnetism; and some of the properties of the _electro magnet_; a knowledge which I made available in 1832 as the basis of my own plan of an electro telegraph. I claim to be the original suggestor and inventor of the electric magnetic telegraph, on the 19th of October, 1832, on board the packet ship Sully, on my voyage from France to the United States, and, _consequently_, the inventor of the first, really _practicable telegraph on the electric principle_. The plan then conceived and drawn out in all its essential characteristics, is the one now in successful operation. All the telegraphs in Europe, which are practicable, are based on a different principle, and, _without an exception_, were invented subsequently to mine. “The thought occurred to me, in a general conversation, as seated at the table with the passengers, in which the experiments of Franklin to ascertain the velocity of electricity through three or four miles. The thought at once occurred to me that electricity might be made the means of conveying intelligence, and that a system of signs might easily be devised for the purpose. I ought, perhaps, to say, that the conception of the idea of an _electric telegraph_, was original with me at that time, and I supposed that I was the first that had ever associated the two words together, nor was it until my invention was completed, and had been successfully operated through ten miles, that I, for the first time, learned, that the idea of an electric telegraph had been conceived by another. To me it was original, and its total dissimilarity from all the inventions and even suggestions of others, may be thus accounted for. I had not the remotest hint from others, till my whole invention was in successful operation. I employed myself in the wakeful hours of the night, as well as in the tedious hours of the day, _in devising the signs, adapting them to a single circuit of wire_, and in _constructing machinery which should record the signs upon paper_, for I thought of no plan short of a mode of recording.”