This enforced leisure gave him the chance he had long desired and he threw himself heart and soul into his electrical experiments.

Writing of this period in later years he thus records his struggles:-- [Illustration: FIRST TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENT, 1837 Now in the National Museum, Washington] "There I immediately commenced, with very limited means, to experiment upon my invention.

My first instrument was made up of an old picture or canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old wooden clock moved by a weight to carry the paper forward; three wooden drums, upon one of which the paper was wound and passed over the other two; a wooden pendulum, suspended to the top piece of the picture or stretching-frame, and vibrating across the paper as it passes over the centre wooden drum; a pencil at the lower end of the pendulum in contact with the paper; an electro-magnet fastened to a shelf across the picture or stretching frame, opposite to an armature made fast to the pendulum; a type rule and type, for breaking the circuit, resting on an endless band composed of carpet-binding; which passed over two wooden rollers, moved by a wooden crank, and carried forward by points projecting from the bottom of the rule downward into the carpet-binding; a lever, with a small weight on the upper side, and a tooth projecting downward at one end, operated on by the type, and a metallic fork, also projecting downward, over two mercury cups; and a short circuit of wire embracing the helices of the electro-magnet connected with the positive and negative poles of the battery and terminating in the mercury cups." This first rude instrument was carefully preserved by the inventor, and is now in the Morse case in the National Museum at Washington.

A reproduction of it is here given.
I shall omit certain technical details in the inventor's account of this first instrument, but I wish to call attention to his ingenuity in adapting the means at his disposal to the end desired.

Much capital has been made, by those who opposed his claims, out of the fact that this primitive apparatus could only produce a V-shaped mark, thus-- __ __ _ \/|__| |/\/ |/\/|__/ -- and not a dot and a dash, which they insist was of later introduction and by another hand.