About five years ago, on my voyage home from Europe, the electrical experiment of Franklin, upon a wire some four miles in length was casually recalled to my mind in a conversation with one of the passengers, in which experiment it was ascertained that the electricity travelled through the whole circuit in a time not appreciable, but apparently instantaneous. _It immediately occurred to me, that if the presence of electricity could be made_ VISIBLE _in any desired part of this circuit, it would not be difficult to construct a_ SYSTEM OF SIGNS _by which intelligence could be instantaneously transmitted._ The thought, thus conceived, took strong hold of my mind in the leisure which the voyage afforded, and I planned a system of signs and an apparatus to carry it into effect. I cast a species of type, which I had devised for this purpose, the first week after my arrival home; and although the rest of the machinery was planned, yet, from the pressure of unavoidable duties, I was compelled to postpone my experiments, and was not able to test the whole plan until within a few weeks. The result has realized my most sanguine expectations. As I have contracted with Mr. Alfred Vail to have a complete apparatus made to demonstrate at Washington by the 1st of January, 1838, the practicability and superiority of my mode of telegraphic communication by means of electro magnetism, (an apparatus which I hope to have the pleasure of exhibiting to you,) I will confine myself in this communication to a statement of its peculiar advantages. _First._ The _fullest and most precise information_ can be almost instantaneously transmitted between any two or more points, between which a wire conductor is laid: that is to say, no other time is consumed than is necessary to write the intelligence to be conveyed, and to convert the words into the telegraphic numbers. The numbers are then transmitted nearly instantaneously, (or if I have been rightly informed in regard to some recent experiments in the velocity of electricity, _two hundred thousand miles in a second_,) to any distance, where the numbers are immediately recognised, and reconverted into the words of the intelligence. _Second._ The same full intelligence can be communicated _at any moment irrespective of the time of day or night, or state of the weather._ This single point establishes its superiority to all other modes of telegraphic communication now known. _Third._ The whole apparatus will occupy but _little space_, (scarcely six cubic feet, probably not more than four;)[11] and it may, therefore, be placed without inconvenience, in any house.