You announced that I was preparing a short _circuit_, to show to my friends the operation of the telegraph. This circuit I have completed, of the length of 1,700 feet, or about one-third of a mile; and on Saturday, the 2d instant, in presence of Professors Gale and Torrey of this city, and Professor Daubeny of the Oxford (English) University, and several other gentlemen, I tried a preliminary experiment with the register. It recorded the intelligence sufficiently perfect to establish the practicability of the plan, and the superior simplicity of my mode of communication, over any of those proposed by the professors in Europe. It will be observed that no account has reached us that any of the foreign proposed electric telegraphs have as yet succeeded in transmitting intelligible communications; but it is merely asserted of the most advanced experiment, (the one in London,) that “by means of five wires,” &c. intelligence “_may be_ conveyed.” I have the gratification of sending you a specimen of the writing of my telegraph, the actual transmission of a communication made this morning, in a more complete manner than on Saturday, and through the distance of one-third of a mile. Thinking it may be gratifying to your readers to see the kind of writing which it performs, I have had it engraved for you, accompanied with an explanation. Your obedient servant, SAML. F. B. MORSE. _N. Y. City University, September 4, 1837._ No. 5. _Specimen of Telegraphic Writing made by means of electricity at the distance of one-third of a mile._ [Illustration] The _words_ in the diagram were the intelligence transmitted. The _numbers_ (in this instance arbitrary) are the numbers of the words in a telegraphic dictionary. The _points_ are the markings of the register, each point being marked every time the electric fluid passes. The register marks but one kind of mark, to wit, (V.) This can be varied two ways. By intervals, thus, (V VV VVV,) signifying one, two, three, &c., and by reversing, thus, (Λ) Examples of both these varieties are seen in the diagram. The single numbers are separated by short, and the whole numbers by _long intervals_. To illustrate by the diagram: the word “successful” is first found in the dictionary, and its telegraphic number, 215, is set up in a species of type prepared for the purpose, and so of the other words. The type then operate upon the machinery, and serve to regulate the times and intervals of the passage of electricity. Each passage of the fluid causes a pencil at the extremity of the wire to mark the points as in the diagram.