In 1832 he went
to the University of the city of New York, where he graduated in
October, 1836. Near the close of the term, however, his health failed,
and he was constrained to relinquish his clerical aims. While in doubts
as to his future he chanced to see the telegraph, and that decided him.
He says: 'I accidentally and without invitation called upon Professor
Morse at the University, and found him with Professors Torrey and
Daubeny in the mineralogical cabinet and lecture-room of Professor Gale,
where Professor Morse was exhibiting to these gentlemen an apparatus
which he called his Electro-Magnetic Telegraph. There were wires
suspended in the room running from one end of it to the other, and
returning many times, making a length of seventeen hundred feet. The
two ends of the wire were connected with an electro-magnet fastened to a
vertical wooden frame. In front of the magnet was its armature, and
also a wooden lever or arm fitted at its extremity to hold a lead-
pencil.... I saw this instrument work, and became thoroughly acquainted
with the principle of its operation, and, I may say, struck with the
rude machine, containing, as I believed, the germ of what was destined
to produce great changes in the conditions and relations of mankind.
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