With the facts that may thus be brought distinctly before the public, it may soon become generally understood whether Professor [Royal Earl] House's Letter Printing telegraph (the only American telegraph patented in Great Britain and other European kingdoms as well as in the United States) is any infringement of Prof. [Samuel] Morse's patent, or of anything which Prof. Morse has a right to claim; and it will also be seen whether the telegraph system caveatted in the United States Patent office by Col. Charles B. Moss, of Virginia, under claim for a patent, (in the same way that Prof. Morse caveatted his vital
principle
as late as 1845–6) is or is not at least as original and effective as any telegraph that makes arbitrary signs like the dots and lines first used by [Carl August von] Steinheil and by Davey in 1837 and 1838, and afterwards combined by Prof. Morse in his first patent of 1840.