GLEN WILD — Tap, tap, tap, stop. Tap, tap, stop.

Invented long before the telephone, Morse Code could send messages over enormous distances using electric pulses that delivered a series of dots and dashes.

It's an interesting and somewhat lost part of history, as cellphones and the Internet make communication so effortless, but Glen Wild resident Kenneth B. Lifshitz spent five years researching the single-wire telegraph and the individuals who played a role in its invention.

His extensive review of documents in Cornell University's Kroch Library in Ithaca, the State Library Archives, the NYU Archives and the Morse papers at the Library of Congress led Lifshitz to write his most recently published book, “Makers of the Telegraph: Samuel Morse, Ezra Cornell and Joseph Henry,” officially released on January 31.

“My interest in Morse derives, in a rather convoluted manner, from a summer 2004 visit to a defunct insane asylum in the town of Ovid,” writes Lifshitz in the book's preface, “on the shores of Seneca Lake, one of the larger Finger Lakes in upstate New York.

“Having myself attended Cornell University in the late 1960s, I became fascinated by Cornell's part in the creation of the telegraph, which had, in some sense, ended in the creation of the very institution in which I then found myself.”

Lifshitz's book examines the careers of the three remarkable innovators, unraveling their lives, important events and the times in which they thrived.

“Makers of the Telegraph: Samuel Morse, Ezra Cornell and Joseph Henry,” is now available in paperback and digital versions on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and directly from publisher McFarland at www.mcfarlandbooks.com.