To whom are we indebted for its invention?

Its invention is by most writers ascribed to the Marquis of Worcester, an Englishman, about 1663; but it does not appear that the inventor could ever interest the public in favor of this, or his other discoveries.  The steam engine of Captain Savery, also an Englishman, is the first of which any definite description has been preserved.  It was invented in 1698.  Since that period it has been successively improved by various persons, but it is to Mr. Watt and Mr. Boulton, of England, that it is indebted for much of its present state of perfection.

By whom was the Steam Engine first applied to the purposes of Navigation?

By John Fitch, of Pennsylvania.  From papers in the historical collections of Pennsylvania, it appears that the first successful experiments were made at Philadelphia, in 1785, three years before the attempts at Falkirk, and on the Clyde, in Scotland.  The boat made several trips on the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, but owing to repeated accidents to her machinery, and the want of funds and competent mechanics for the necessary repairs, she was abandoned.  In 1807, Robert Fulton, also of Pennsylvania, made his first experimental trip on the Hudson River, with complete success.  To this distinguished and ingenious American justly belongs the honor of having brought navigation by steam to a state of perfection.  In 1819, the first steamship crossed the Atlantic from Savannah to Liverpool; and in 1838, a regular communication by steamship was established between Great Britain and the United States.  Since that period, ocean navigation by steam-vessels has made rapid progress, and, at the present time, numbers of steamers connect our various seaports with those of other nations, and with each other.

What is the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph?

An instrument, or apparatus, by means of which intelligence is conveyed to any distance with the velocity of lightning.  The electric fluid, when an excess has accumulated in one place, always seeks to transfer itself to another, until an equilibrium of its distribution is fully restored.  Consequently, when two places are connected by means of a good conductor of electricity, as, for instance, the telegraphic wire; the fluid generated by a galvanic battery, if the communication be rendered complete, instantaneously traverses the whole extent of the wire, and charges, at the distant station, an electro-magnet; this attracts one end of a lever, and draws it downward, while the other extremity is thrown up, and, by means of a style, marks a slip of paper, which is steadily wound off from a roller by the aid of clock-work.  If the communication is immediately broken, only one wave of electricity passes over, and a dot is made upon the paper; if kept up, a line is marked.  These dots and lines are made to represent the letters of the alphabet, so that an operator employed for the purpose can easily read the message which is transmitted.—­The Electro-Magnetic Telegraph was first introduced upon a line between Baltimore and Washington, by Professor Morse, in 1844; at the present time, it is in successful operation between nearly all the important cities and towns of the United States and of Europe.