The syphon or siphon recorder is an antique electromechanical device used in telegraph offices invented by William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin in 1858. It was used to automatically record an incoming telegraph message, as a wiggling ink line on a roll of paper tape. Later a trained telegrapher would read the tape, translating the pulses representing the "dots" and "dashes" of the Morse code to characters of the text message.