Your affectionate friend,
James L. Perrot.
Bath, Dec. 9, 1795.
Claims of priority of invention are always listened to with doubt, or, at best, with impatience. To those who bring the invention to perfection, who actually adapt it to use, mankind are justly most grateful, and to these, rather than to the original inventors, grant the honors of a triumph. Sensible of this, the matter is urged no farther, but left to the justice of posterity.
I am happy to state, however, one plain fact, which stands independent of all controversy, that my father's was the first, and I believe the only, telegraph which ever spoke across the Channel from Ireland to Scotland. He was, as he says in his essay on this subject, "ambitious of being the first person who should connect the islands more closely by facilitating their mutual intercourse;" and on the 24th of August, 1794, my brothers had the satisfaction of sending by my father's telegraph four messages across the Channel, and of receiving immediate answers, before a vast concourse of spectators.
Edgeworth to Dr. Darwin.
Edgeworthtown, Dec. 11, 1794.
I have been employed for two months in experiments upon a telegraph of my own invention. I tried it partially twenty-six years ago. It differs from the French in distinctness and expedition, as the intelligence is not conveyed alphabetically....
I intended to detail my telegraphs (in the plural), but I find that I have not room at present. If you think it worth while, you shall have the whole scheme before you, which I know you will improve for me. Suffice it, that by day, at eighteen or twenty miles' distance, I show, by four pointers, isosceles triangles, twenty feet high, on four imaginary circles, eight imaginary points, which correspond with the figures