Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals Volume II Part 3

"Early in 1836 I procured forty feet of wire, and, putting it in the circuit, I found that my battery of one cup was not sufficient to work my instrument. This result suggested to me the probability that the magnetism to be obtained from the electric current would diminish in proportion as the circuit was lengthened, so as to be insufficient for any practical purposes at great distances; and, to remove that probable obstacle to my success, I conceived the idea of combining two or more circuits together in the manner described in my first patent, each with an independent battery, making use of the magnetism of the current on the first to close and break the second; the second the third; and so on."

Thus modestly does he refer to what was, in fact, a wonderful discovery, the more wonderful because of its simplicity. Professor Horsford thus comments on it:--

"In 1835 Morse made the discovery of the _relay_, the most brilliant of all the achievements to which his name must be forever attached. It was a discovery of a means by which the current, which through distance from its source had become feeble, could be reenforced or renewed. This discovery, according to the different objects for which it is employed, is variously known as the registering magnet, the local circuit, the marginal circuit, the repeater, etc."

Professor Horsford places the date of this discovery in the year 1835, but Morse himself, in the statement quoted above, a.s.signed it to the early part of 1836.

It is only fair to note that the discovery of the principle of the relay was made independently by other scientists, notably by Davy, Wheatstone, and Henry, but Morse apparently antedated them by a year or two, and could not possibly have been indebted to any of them for the idea. This point has given rise to much discussion among scientists which it will not be necessary to enter into here, for all authorities agree in according to Morse independent invention of the relay.

"Up to the autumn of 1837," again to quote Morse's own words, "my telegraphic apparatus existed in so rude a form that I felt a reluctance to have it seen. My means were very limited--so limited as to preclude the possibility of constructing an apparatus of such mechanical finish as to warrant my success in venturing upon its public exhibition. I had no wish to expose to ridicule the representative of so many hours of laborious thought.

"Prior to the summer of 1837, at which time Mr. Alfred Vail's attention became attracted to my telegraph, I depended upon my pencil for subsistence. Indeed, so straitened were my circ.u.mstances that, in order to save time to carry out my invention and to economize my scanty means, I had for months lodged and eaten in my studio, procuring my food in small quant.i.ties from some grocery, and preparing it myself. To conceal from my friends the stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit of bringing my food to my room in the evenings, and this was my mode of life for many years."

Nearly twenty years later, in 1853, Morse referred to this trying period in his career at a meeting of the a.s.sociation of the Alumni of the University:--

"Yesternight, on once more entering your chapel, I saw the same marble staircase and marble floors I once so often trod, and so often with a heart and head overburdened with almost crus.h.i.+ng anxieties. Separated from the chapel by but a thin part.i.tion was that room I occupied, now your Philomathean Hall, whose walls--had thoughts and mental struggles, with the alternations of joys and sorrows, the power of being daguerreotyped upon them--would show a thickly studded gallery of evidence that there the Briarean infant was born who has stretched forth his arms with the intent to encircle the world. Yes, that room of the University was the birthplace of the Recording Telegraph. Attempts, indeed, have been made to a.s.sign to it other parentage, and to its birthplace other localities. Personally I have very little anxiety on this point, except that the truth should not suffer; for I have a consciousness, which neither sophistry nor ignorance can shake, that that room is the place of its birth, and a confidence, too, that its cradle is in hands that will sustain its rightful claim."

The old building of the University of the City of New York on Was.h.i.+ngton Square has been torn down to be replaced by a mercantile structure; the University has moved to more s.p.a.cious quarters in the upper part of the great city; but one of its notable buildings is the Hall of Fame, and among the first names to be immortalized in bronze in the stately colonnade was that of Samuel F.B. Morse.

CHAPTER XXIII

1835--1837

First exhibitions of the Telegraph.--Testimony of Robert G. Rankin and Rev. Henry B. Tappan.--Cooke and Wheatstone.--Joseph Henry, Leonard D.

Gale, and Alfred Vail.--Professor Gale's testimony.--Professor Henry's discoveries.--Regrettable controversy of later years.--Professor Charles T. Jackson's claims.--Alfred Vail.--Contract of September 23, 1837.--Work at Morristown. New Jersey.--The "Morse Alphabet."--Reading by sound.-- first and second forms of alphabet.

In after years the question of the time when the telegraph was first exhibited to others was a disputed one; it will, therefore, be well to give the testimony of a few men of undoubted integrity who personally witnessed the first experiments.

Robert G. Rankin, Esq., gave his reminiscences to Mr. Prime, from which I shall select the following pa.s.sages:--

"Professor Morse was one of the purest and n.o.blest men of any age. I believe I was among the earliest, outside of his family circle, to whom he communicated his design to encircle the globe with wire....

"Some time in the fall of 1835 I was pa.s.sing along the easterly walk of Was.h.i.+ngton Parade-Ground, leading from Waverly Place to Fourth Street, when I heard my name called. On turning round I saw, over the picketfence, an outstretched arm from a person standing in the middle or main entrance door of the unfinished University building of New York, and immediately recognized the professor, who beckoned me toward him. On meeting and exchanging salutations,--and you know how genial his were,-- he took me by the arm and said:

"'I wish you to go up in my sanctum and examine a piece of mechanism, which, if you may not believe in, _you_, at least, will not laugh at, as I fear some others will. I want you to give me your frank opinion as a friend, for I know your interest in and love of the applied sciences.'"

Here follow a description of what he saw and Morse's explanation, and, then he continues:--

"A long silence on the part of each ensued, which was at length broken by my exclamation: 'Well, professor, you have a pretty play!--theoretically true but practically useful only as a mantel ornament, or for a mistress in the parlor to direct the maid in the cellar! But, professor, _cui bono?_ In imagination one can make a new earth and improve all the land communications of our old one, but my unfortunate practicality stands in the way of my comprehension as yet.'

"We then had a long conversation on the subject of magnetism and its modifications, and if I do not recollect the very words which clothed his thoughts, they were substantially as follows.

"He had been long impressed with the belief that G.o.d had created the great forces of nature, not only as manifestations of his own infinite power, but as expressions of good-will to man, to do him good, and that every one of G.o.d's great forces could yet be utilized for man's welfare; that modern science was constantly evolving from the hitherto hidden secrets of nature some new development promotive of human welfare; and that, at no distant day, magnetism would do more for the advancement of human sociology than any of the material forces yet known; that he would scarcely dare to compare spiritual with material forces, yet that, a.n.a.logically, magnetism would do in the advancement of human welfare what the Spirit of G.o.d would do in the moral renovation of man's nature; that it would educate and enlarge the forces of the world.... He said he had felt as if he was doing a great work for G.o.d's glory as well as for man's welfare; that such had been his long cherished thought. His whole soul and heart appeared filled with a glow of love and good-will, and his sensitive and impa.s.sioned nature seemed almost to transform him in my eyes into a prophet."

It required, indeed, the inspirational vision of a prophet to foresee, in those narrow, skeptical days, the tremendous part which electricity was to play in the civilization of a future age, and I wish again to lay stress on the fact that it was the telegraph which first harnessed this mysterious force, and opened the eyes of the world to the availability of a power which had lain dormant through all the ages, but which was now, for the first time, to be brought under the control of man, and which was destined to rival, and eventually to displace, in many ways, its elder brother steam. Was not Morse's ambition to confer a lasting good on his fellowmen more fully realized than even he himself at that time comprehended?

The Reverend Henry B. Tappan, who in 1835 was a colleague of Morse's in the New York University and afterwards President of the University of Michigan, gave his testimony in reply to a request from Morse, and, among other things, he said:--

"In 1835 you had advanced so far that you were prepared to give, on a small scale, a practical demonstration of the possibility of transmitting and recording words through distance by means of an electro-magnetic arrangement. I was one of the limited circle whom you invited to witness the first experiments. In a long room of the University you had wires extended from end to end, where the magnetic apparatus was arranged.

"It is not necessary for me to describe particulars which have now become familiar to every one. The fact which I recall with the liveliest interest, and which I mentioned in conversation at Mr. Bancroft's as one of the choicest recollections of my life, was that of the first transmission and recording of a telegraphic dispatch.

"I suppose, of course, that you had already made these experiments before the company arrived whom you had invited. But I claim to have witnessed _the first transmission and recording of words_ by lightning ever made public.... The arrangement which you exhibited on the above mentioned occasion, as well as the mode of receiving the dispatches, were substantially the same as those you now employ. I feel certain that you had then already grasped the whole invention, however you may have since perfected the details."

Others bore testimony in similar words, so that we may regard it as proved that, both in 1835 and 1836, demonstrations were made which, uncouth though they were, compared to present-day perfection, proved that the electric telegraph was about to emerge from the realms of fruitless experiment. Among these witnesses were Daniel Huntington, Hon. Hamilton Fish, and Commodore Shubrick; and several of these gentlemen a.s.serted that, at that early period, Morse confidently predicted that Europe and America would eventually be united by an electric wire.

The letters written by Morse during these critical years have become hopelessly dispersed, and but few have come into my possession. His brothers were both in New York, so that there was no necessity of writing to them, and the letters written to others cannot, at this late day, be traced. As he also, unfortunately, did not keep a journal, I must depend on the testimony of others, and on his own recollections in later years for a chronicle of his struggles. The pencil copy of a letter written to a friend in Albany, on August 27, 1837, has, however, survived, and the following sentences will, I think, be found interesting:--

"Thanks to you, my dear C----, for the concern you express in regard to my health. It has been perfectly good and is now, with the exception of a little anxiety in relation to the telegraph and to my great pictorial undertaking, which wears the furrows of my face a little deeper. My Telegraph, in all its essential points, is tested to my own satisfaction and that of the scientific gentlemen who have seen it; but the machinery (all which, from its peculiar character, I have been compelled to make myself) is imperfect, and before it can be perfected I have reason to fear that other nations will take the hint and rob me both of the credit and the profit. There are indications of this in the foreign journals lately received. I have a defender in the 'Journal of Commerce' (which I send you that you may know what is the progress of the matter), and doubtless other journals of our country will not allow foreign nations to take the credit of an invention of such vast importance as they a.s.sign to it, when they learn that it certainly belongs to America.

"There is not a thought in any one of the foreign journals relative to the Telegraph which I had not expressed nearly five years ago, on my pa.s.sage from France, to scientific friends; and when it is considered how quick a hint flies from mind to mind and is soon past all tracing back to the original suggester of the hint, it is certainly by no means improbable that the excitement on the subject in England has its origin from my giving the details of the plan of my Telegraph to some of the Englishmen or other fellow-pa.s.sengers on board the s.h.i.+p, or to some of the many I have since made acquainted with it during the five years past."

In this he was mistaken, for the English telegraph of Cooke and Wheatstone was quite different in principle, using the deflection, by a current of electricity, of a delicately adjusted needle to point to the letters of the alphabet. While this was in use in England for a number of years, it was gradually superseded by the Morse telegraph which proved its decided superiority. It is also worthy of note that in this letter, and in all future letters and articles, he, with pardonable pride, uses a capital T in speaking of his Telegraph.

One of the most difficult of the problems which confront the historian who sincerely wishes to deal dispa.s.sionately with his subject is justly to apportion the credit which must be given to different workers in the same field of endeavor, and especially in that of invention; for every invention is but an improvement on something which has gone before. The sail-boat was an advance on the rude dugout propelled by paddles. The first clumsy steamboat seemed a marvel to those who had known no other propulsive power than that of the wind or the oar. The horse-drawn vehicle succeeded the litter and the palanquin, to be in turn followed by the locomotive; and so the telegraph, as a means of rapidly communicating intelligence between distant points, was the logical successor of the signal fire and the semaph.o.r.e.

In all of these improvements by man upon what man had before accomplished, the pioneer was not only dependent upon what his predecessors had achieved, but, in almost every case, was compelled to call to his a.s.sistance other workers to whom could be confided some of the minutiae which were essential to the successful launching of the new enterprise.

I have shown conclusively that the idea of transmitting intelligence by electricity was original with Morse in that he was unaware, until some years after his first conception, that anyone else had ever thought of it. I have also shown that he, unaided by others, invented and made with his own hands a machine, rude though it may have been, which actually did transmit and record intelligence by means of the electric current, and in a manner entirely different from the method employed by others. But he had now come to a point where knowledge of what others had accomplished along the same line would greatly facilitate his labors, and when the a.s.sistance of one more skilled in mechanical construction was a great desideratum, and both of these essentials were at hand. It is quite possible that he might have succeeded in working out the problem absolutely unaided, just as a man might become a great painter without instruction, without a knowledge of the acc.u.mulated wisdom of those who preceded him, and without the a.s.sistance of the color-maker and the manufacturer of brushes and canvas. But the artist is none the less a genius because he listens to the counsels of his master, profits by the experience of others, and purchases his supplies instead of grinding his own colors and laboriously manufacturing his own canvas and brushes.

The three men to whom Morse was most indebted for material a.s.sistance in his labors at this critical period were Professor Joseph Henry, Professor Leonard D. Gale, and Alfred Vail, and it is my earnest desire to do full justice to all of them. Unfortunately after the telegraph had become an a.s.sured success, and even down to the present day, the claims of Morse have been bitterly a.s.sailed, both by well-meaning persons and by the unscrupulous who sought to break down his patent rights; and the names of these three men were freely used in the effort to prove that to one or all of them more credit was due than to Morse.

Now, after the lapse of nearly three quarters of a century, the verdict has been given in favor of Morse, his name alone is accepted as that of the Inventor of the Telegraph, and in this work it is my aim to prove that the judgment of posterity has not erred, but also to give full credit to those who aided him when he was most in need of a.s.sistance. My task in some instances will be a delicate one; I shall have to p.r.i.c.k some bubbles, for the friends of some of these men have claimed too much for them, and, on that account, have been bitter in their accusations against Morse. I shall also have to acknowledge some errors of judgment on the part of Morse, for the malice of others fomented a dispute between him and one of these three men, which caused a permanent estrangement and was greatly to be regretted.

The first of the three to enter into the history of the telegraph was Leonard D. Gale, who, in 1836, was a professor in the University of the City of New York, and he has given his recollections of those early days.

Avoiding a repet.i.tion of facts already recorded I shall quote some sentences from Professor Gale's statement. After describing the first instrument, which he saw in January of 1836, he continues:--

"During the years 1836 and beginning of 1837 the studies of Professor Morse on his telegraph I found much interrupted by his attention to his professional duties. I understood that want of pecuniary means prevented him from procuring to be made such mechanical improvements, and such substantial workmans.h.i.+p, as would make the operation of his invention more exact.

"In the months of March and April, 1837, the announcement of an extraordinary telegraph on the visual plan (as it afterwards proved to be), the invention of two French gentlemen of the names of Gonon and Servell, was going the rounds of the papers. The thought occurred to me, as well as to Professor Morse and some others of his friends, that the invention of his electro-magnetic telegraph had somehow become known, and was the origin of the new telegraph thus conspicuously announced. This announcement at once aroused Professor Morse to renewed exertions to bring the new invention creditably before the public, and to consent to a public announcement of the existence of his invention. From April to September, 1837, Professor Morse and myself were engaged together in the work of preparing magnets, winding wire, constructing batteries, etc., in the University for an experiment on a larger, but still very limited scale, in the little leisure that each had to spare, and being at the same time much cramped for funds....

"The latter part of August, 1887, the operation of the instruments was shown to numerous visitors at the University....

"On Sat.u.r.day, the 2d of September, 1837, Professor Daubeny, of the English Oxford University, being on a visit to this country, was invited with a few friends to see the operation of the telegraph, in its then rude form, in the cabinet of the New York University, where it had then been put up with a circuit of seventeen hundred feet of copper wire stretched back and forth in that long room. Professor Daubeny, Professor Torrey, and Mr. Alfred Vail were present among others. This exhibition of the telegraph, although of very rude and imperfectly constructed machinery, demonstrated to all present the practicability of the invention, and it resulted in enlisting the means, the skill, and the zeal of Mr. Alfred Vail, who, early the next week, called at the rooms and had a more perfect explanation from Professor Morse of the character of the invention."

It was Professor Gale who first called Morse's attention to the discoveries of Professor Joseph Henry, especially to that of the intensity magnet, and he thus describes the interesting event:--

"Morse's machine was complete in all its parts and operated perfectly through a circuit of some forty feet, but there was not sufficient force to send messages to a distance. At this time I was a lecturer on chemistry, and from necessity was acquainted with all kinds of galvanic batteries, and knew that a battery of one or a few cups generates a large quant.i.ty of electricity capable of producing heat, etc., but not of projecting electricity to a great distance, and that, to accomplish this, a battery of many cups is necessary. It was, therefore, evident to me that the one large cup-battery of Morse should be made into ten or fifteen smaller ones to make it a battery of intensity so as to project the electric fluid.... Accordingly I subst.i.tuted the battery of many cups for the battery of one cup. The remaining defect in the Morse machine, as first seen by me, was that the coil of wire around the poles of the electro-magnet consisted of but a few turns only, while, to give the greatest projectile power, the number of turns should be increased from tens to hundreds, as shown by Professor Henry in his paper published in the 'American Journal of Science,' 1831.... After subst.i.tuting the battery of twenty cups for that of a single cup, we added some hundred or more turns to the coil of wire around the poles of the magnet and sent a message through two hundred feet of conductors, then through one thousand feet, and then through ten miles of wire arranged on reels in my own lecture-room in the New York University in the presence of friends."

This was a most important step in hastening the reduction of the invention to a practical, workable basis and I wish here to bear testimony to the great services of Professor Henry in making this possible. His valuable discoveries were freely given to the world with no attempt on his part to patent them, which is, perhaps, to be regretted, but much more is it to be deplored that, in, the litigation which ensued a few years later, Morse and Henry were drawn into a controversy, fostered and fomented by others for their own pecuniary benefit, which involved the honor and veracity of both of these distinguished men. Both were men of the greatest sensitiveness, proud and jealous of their own integrity, and the breach once made was never healed. Of the rights and wrongs of this controversy I may have occasion later on to treat more in detail, although I should much prefer to dismiss it with the acknowledgment that there was much to deplore in what was said and written by Morse, although he sincerely believed himself to be in the right, and much to regret in some of the statements and actions of Henry.

At this late day, when the mists which enveloped the questions have rolled away, it seems but simple justice to admit that the wonderful discoveries of Henry were essential to the successful working over long distances of Morse's discoveries and inventions; just as the discoveries and inventions of earlier and contemporary scientists were essential to Henry's improvements. But it is also just to place emphasis on the fact that Henry's experiments were purely scientific. He never attempted to put them in concrete form for the use of mankind in general; they led up to the telegraph; they were not a practical telegraph in themselves. It was Morse who added the final link in the long chain, and, by combining the discoveries of others with those which he had himself made, gave to the world this wonderful new agent.

A recent writer in the "Scientific American" gave utterance to the following sentiment, which, it seems to me, most aptly describes this difference: "We need physical discoveries and revere those who seek truth for its own sake. But mankind with keen instinct saves its warmest acclaim for those who also make discoveries of some avail in adding to the length of life, its joys, its possibilities, its conveniences."