The first suggestion of an electric telegraph on record is that
published by one 'C. M.' in the Scots Magazine for February 17, 1753.
The device consisted in running a number of insulated wires between two
places, one for each letter of the alphabet. The wires were to be
charged with electricity from a machine one at a time, according to the
letter it represented. At its far end the charged wire was to attract a
disc of paper marked with the corresponding letter, and so the message
would be spelt. 'C. M.' also suggested the first acoustic telegraph,
for he proposed to have a set of bells instead of the letters, each of a
different tone, and to be struck by the spark from its charged wire.

The identity of 'C. M.,' who dated his letter from Renfrew, has not been
established beyond a doubt. There is a tradition of a clever man living
in Renfrew at that time, and afterwards in Paisley, who could 'licht a
room wi' coal reek (smoke), and mak' lichtnin' speak and write upon the
wa'.' By some he was thought to be a certain Charles Marshall, from
Aberdeen; but it seems likelier that he was a Charles Morrison, of
Greenock, who was trained as a surgeon, and became connected with the
tobacco trade of Glasgow. In Renfrew he was regarded as a kind of
wizard, and he is said to have emigrated to Virginia, where he died.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, many other suggestions of
telegraphs based on the known properties of the electric fire were
published; for example, by Joseph Bozolus, a Jesuit lecturer of Rome, in
1767; by Odier, a Geneva physicist, in 1773, who states in a letter to a
lady, that he conceived the idea on hearing a casual remark, while
dining at Sir John Pringle's, with Franklin, Priestley, and other great
geniuses. 'I shall amuse you, perhaps, in telling you,' he says,'that I
have in my head certain experiments by which to enter into conversation
with the Emperor of Mogol or of China, the English, the French, or any