Now comes the conception of devices for employing an agent which could produce reciprocal motion to effect registration, and the invention of an alphabet.

In order to this invention it must be seen how up and down--reciprocal--motion could be produced by the opening and closing of the circuit.

Into this simple band of vertical tracery of paths in space must be thrown the shuttle of time and a ribbon of paper.
It must be seen how a lever-pen, alternately dropping upon and rising at defined intervals from a fillet of paper moved by independent clock-work, would produce the fabric of the alphabet and writing and printing.
"Was there anything required to produce these results which was not known to Morse ?...
"He knew, for he had witnessed it years before, that, by means of a battery and an electro-magnet, reciprocal motion could be produced.

He knew that the force which produced it could be transmitted along a wire.
He _believed_ that the battery current could be made, through an electro-magnet, to produce physical results at a _distance_.

He saw in his mind's eye the existence of an agent and a medium by which reciprocal motion could be not only produced but controlled at a distance.