 David Homer Bates, one of the four original members of the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps, recounted in his book, Lincoln in the Telegraph Room, that several times a day, the president sat down at a telegraph office desk near a window overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue and read through the fresh stack of incoming telegrams, which he called lightning messages. As telegraph keys chattered, he peered over the shoulders of the operators who scribbled down the incoming messages converted from Moore's coat.