designated, by the same letters, and are connected by a return wire with
the table of him who wishes to dictate the message. If, now, he who is
dictating puts the external armature of a Leyden jar in contact with the
return wire, and the ball of this jar in contact with a metallic rod
touching that of the tinfoil strip which corresponds with the letter
which he wishes to dictate to the other, sparks will be produced upon
the nearest as well as upon the remotest strips, and the distant
correspondent, seeing such sparks, may immediately write down the letter
marked. Will an extended application of this system ever be made? That
is not the question; it is possible. It will be very expensive; but the
post hordes from Saint Petersburg to Lisbon are also very expensive,
and if any one should apply the idea on a large scale, I shall claim a
recompense."

Every letter, then, was signaled by one or several sparks that started
forth on the breaking of the strip; but we see nothing in this document
to authorize the opinion which has existed, that every tinfoil strip was
a sort of magic tablet upon which the sparks traced the very form of the
letter to be transmitted.

Voigt, the editor of the _Magazin_, adds, in continuation of Reusser's
communication: "Mr. Reusser should have proposed the addition to this
arrangement of a vessel filled with detonating gas which could be
exploded in the first place, by means of the electric spark, in order
to notify the one to whom something was to be dictated that he should
direct his attention to the strips of tinfoil."

This passage gives the first indication of the use of a special call for
the telegraph. The same year (1794), in a work entitled _Versuch ueber
Telegraphie und Telegraphen_, Boeckmann likewise proposed the use of the