The Reverend Henry B. Tappan, who in 1835 was a colleague of Morse’s in the New York University and afterwards President of the University of Michigan, gave his testimony in reply to a request from Morse, and, among other things, he said:—­

“In 1835 you had advanced so far that you were prepared to give, on a small scale, a practical demonstration of the possibility of transmitting and recording words through distance by means of an electro-magnetic arrangement.  I was one of the limited circle whom you invited to witness the first experiments.  In a long room of the University you had wires extended from end to end, where the magnetic apparatus was arranged.

“It is not necessary for me to describe particulars which have now become familiar to every one.  The fact which I recall with the liveliest interest, and which I mentioned in conversation at Mr. Bancroft’s as one of the choicest recollections of my life, was that of the first transmission and recording of a telegraphic dispatch.

“I suppose, of course, that you had already made these experiments before the company arrived whom you had invited.  But I claim to have witnessed the first transmission and recording of words by lightning ever made public....  The arrangement which you exhibited on the above mentioned occasion, as well as the mode of receiving the dispatches, were substantially the same as those you now employ.  I feel certain that you had then already grasped the whole invention, however you may have since perfected the details.”

Others bore testimony in similar words, so that we may regard it as proved that, both in 1835 and 1836, demonstrations were made which, uncouth though they were, compared to present-day perfection, proved that the electric telegraph was about to emerge from the realms of fruitless experiment.  Among these witnesses were Daniel Huntington, Hon. Hamilton Fish, and Commodore Shubrick; and several of these gentlemen asserted that, at that early period, Morse confidently predicted that Europe and America would eventually be united by an electric wire.

The letters written by Morse during these critical years have become hopelessly dispersed, and but few have come into my possession.  His brothers were both in New York, so that there was no necessity of writing to them, and the letters written to others cannot, at this late day, be traced.  As he also, unfortunately, did not keep a journal, I must depend on the testimony of others, and on his own recollections in later years for a chronicle of his struggles.  The pencil copy of a letter written to a friend in Albany, on August 27, 1837, has, however, survived, and the following sentences will, I think, be found interesting:—­