The question that addressed itself to him at the outset was, naturally, this: 'How can I make use of the simple up-and-down motion of opening and closing a circuit to write an intelligible message at one end of a wire, and at the same time print it at the other ?'...

Like many a kindred work of genius it was in nothing more wonderful than in its simplicity....

Not one of the brilliant scientific men who have attached their names to the history of electro-magnetism had brought the means to produce the practical registering telegraph.

Some of them had ascended the tower that looked out on the field of conquest.

Some of them brought keener vision than others.