interests.

It was on the packet ship _Sully_, crossing the Atlantic from France,
that Morse conceived the telegraph which was to prove the first great
practical application of electricity. One noon as the passengers
were gathered about the luncheon-table, a Dr. Charles T. Jackson,
of Boston, exhibited an electro-magnet he had secured in Europe, and
described certain electrical experiments he had seen while in Paris.
He was asked concerning the speed of electricity through a wire, and
replied that, according to Faraday, it was practically instantaneous.
The discussion recalled to Morse his own collegiate studies in
electricity, and he remarked that if the circuit were interrupted the
current became visible, and that it occurred to him that these flashes
might be used as a means of communication. The idea of using the
current to carry messages became fixed in his mind, and he pondered,
over it during the remaining weeks of the long, slow voyage.

Doctor Jackson claimed, after Morse had perfected and established his
telegraph, that the idea had been his own, and that Morse had secured
it from him on board the _Sully_. But Doctor Jackson was not a
practical man who either could or did put any ideas he may have had
to practical use. At the most he seems to have simply started Morse's
mind along a new train of thought. The idea of using the current as
a carrier of messages, though it was new to Morse, had occurred to
others earlier, as we have seen. But at the very outset Morse set
himself to find a means by which he might make the current not only
signal the message, but actually record it. Before he landed from the
_Sully_ he had worked out sketches of a printing telegraph. In this
the current actuated an electro-magnet on the end of which was a rod.
This rod was to mark down dots and dashes on a moving tape of paper.