Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

FOOTNOTES:

[9] In 1834 Professor Morse wrote a series of papers which were afterwards published as a volume with the title Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States.

CHAPTER III.

“For a man to do benefit from such means as he may have and may cause, is the most glorious of labours.”—Sophocles.

The practical working of the telegraph being now demonstrated, Professor Morse may be said to have forsaken his first vocation. He afterwards assured his artist friends that his leaving their ranks cost him many a pang, and that he did not leave them till he saw them well established and entering upon a career of prosperity. He also pointed out that in the records of art there were conspicuous examples of men forsaking art to enter upon a career of invention. The American Fulton, whose scientific studies led to the introduction of steam navigation was a painter, and “it may not be generally known that the important invention of the percussion cap was due to the scientific recreations of the English painter Shaw.” In like manner Daguerre, who in France discovered the art of photography, was an artist; and just when Professor Morse was prosecuting his art studies with the greatest zeal and hope, it was stated that in early life painting was the favourite amusement of Sir Humphry Davy, who was diverted from art to chemistry by the results of some experiments instituted for the purpose of preparing colours. To such examples has now to be added the inventor of the recording telegraph. Professor Morse always claimed for himself the credit of being the inventor of the first telegraph, by which, however, he meant a telegraph in the strict definition of the word—a means of recording intelligence at a distance. From that point of view he contended that the invention of Wheatstone and Cooke was a semaphore, which merely indicated letters on a dial by the movement of needles; and that while the invention of a telegraph was one thing, its practical introduction was quite another thing—the time of the invention was one thing and the time of its practical introduction another. “In 1832,” he said, in reply to a challenge from W. F. Cooke, “I had the idea of producing an automatic record at a distance by means of electricity, the idea of a true telegraph; and this original idea was immediately followed by the invention of the means for carrying it into effect. This was the new idea of 1832 now realised in the Morse telegraph system, and the Chief Justice of the United States, in delivering the judgment of the supreme court, said there was full and clear evidence that when Morse was returning from Europe in 1832 he was deeply engaged upon this subject during the voyage, and that the process and means were so far developed and arranged in his own mind that he was confident of its ultimate success.” The inventor admitted that 1844 was the date of the practical introduction of the invention of 1832; and he did not claim exclusive credit for the invention. He himself stated that it rarely, if ever, happened that any invention was so independent of all others that a single individual could justly appropriate to himself the entire credit of all its parts. “It is only,” he said, “when the nature of an invention is properly understood that the justice of the ascription of honour to the individual inventor is perceived. Invention is emphatically combination, an assembling or putting together of things known, whether discoveries or other inventions, to produce a new effect, to create a new art.” If that definition appears to be especially adapted to suit his own circumstances, it is worthy of remark that similar definitions were given by Aristotle and Bacon.

Professor Morse always felt sure that if he had only an opportunity of demonstrating the operation of his telegraph, its utility would be self-evident. Sad experience had taught him that it was not an easy task to convince a money-making people of the value of a mere work of art,—“a thing of beauty;” but how different, he thought, would be the case with the electric telegraph, which he believed capable of uniting, by “the pulse of speech,” the New World with the Old, which seemed destined to annihilate space, and to extend to peoples far apart one of the greatest gifts bestowed by the Creator upon persons near each other—an instantaneous intercharge of thought. Had he not solved the problem which the ancient Hebrew propounded as a sublime impossibility: “Canst thou send lightnings that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?” Yea, more,—he had made the element which Franklin had proved to be akin to lightning not only the messenger but the recorder of human speech. But even this was not enough to command success. Difficulty and disappointment were still before him. In the great tragedy of Æschylus illustrating the struggle of mind against circumstances and the ingratitude of mankind to inventors, Prometheus is represented as conferring a great blessing upon mortals by causing blind hopes to dwell among them, and thus stopping them from ever looking forward to their fate. But higher aspirations impelled Morse onward in his beneficent career. Have ye never observed, said Saurin, that people of the finest and most enlarged geniuses have often the least success of any people in the world? “This may appear at first sight very unaccountable, but a little attention will explain the mystery. A narrow, contracted mind usually concentrates itself in one single object: it wholly employs itself in forming projects of happiness proportioned to its own capacity, and as its capacity is extremely shallow, it easily meets with the means of executing them. But this is not the case with a man of superior genius, whose fruitful fancy forms notions of happiness grand and sublime. He invents noble plans, involuntarily gives himself up to his own chimeras, and derives a pleasure from these ingenious shadows, which for a few moments compensate for the want of substance; but when his reverie is over, he finds real beings inferior to ideal ones, and thus his genius serves to make him miserable. A man is much to be pitied when the penetration of his mind and the fruitfulness of his invention furnish him with ideas of a delighted community attached by a faithful and delicate appreciation. Recall to him this world, above which his imagination had just now raised him; consider him among men whose knowledge and friendship are merely superficial, and you will be convinced that the art of inventing is often the art of self-tormenting.” Need we wonder, then, that after the utility of Morse’s telegraph was fully demonstrated, he experienced unexpected difficulty as to its adoption. His first idea was to attach it to the Post Office Department. “My earliest desires,” he said, “were that the Government should possess the control of such a power as I could not but foresee was inherent in the telegraph. Vast as its pecuniary value loomed up in the minds of some, in the contemplation of its future I was neither dazzled with its visions of untold wealth, nor tempted to make an extortionate demand upon the Government for its possession. Not merely all my own property had been expended on the invention, but large sums had been advanced by my associates, and these were items that entered into the calculations of any offer of sale.” In September, 1837, he suggested in a letter to the Secretary that it would be a useful auxiliary to the Post Office, and the Secretary supported the suggestion in a letter to the Speaker of the House on December 6, 1837. Two months later the importunate inventor repeated his proposal to the Chairman of the House Committee of Commerce. Again, in 1842, the Hon. C. G. Ferris, writing from the Committee of Commerce, remarked that the prospects of profit to individual enterprise were so inviting that “it is a matter of serious consideration whether the Government should not on this account alone seize the present opportunity of securing to itself the regulation of a system which, if monopolised by a private company, might be used to the serious injury of the Post Office Department.”

When negotiating with the Government in reference to the grant for the experimental line, Professor Morse undertook that, before entering into any arrangement for disposing of his patent rights to any individual or company, he would offer it to the Government for such a just and reasonable compensation as might be mutually agreed upon. Accordingly, after the construction of the experimental line and the successful demonstration of its working, he offered the whole of his rights to the Government for 100,000 dollars. The only notice the Government took of this offer was to request from the Postmaster-General a report on the subject. The Postmaster-General in 1845 happened to be Mr. Cave Johnson, who in Congress ridiculed and opposed the telegraph bill, and who now had under his control the experimental line from Washington to Baltimore. The reply he gave to Professor Morse’s offer was that he was not yet satisfied that under any rate of postage the revenue of the telegraph could be made equal to the expenditure. One half of the time for which his patent granted protection had now expired, and it was therefore necessary to use every means to make it a commercial success. This Professor Morse did, but being unwilling to “shut the door” against the Government, he inserted a proviso in every contract he made for the use of the telegraph, that if the Government concluded arrangements for the purchase of it by the 4th of March, 1847, the contract should cease. Nevertheless the Government allowed the opportunity to go unheeded, and the Professor complained not only of the disappointment thus occasioned, but of the prejudice it created against him. Companies had been formed for constructing lines from Baltimore to New York and from New York to Buffalo, and the promoters at the outset were hopeful that the revenue would at least equal the expenditure; but the conduct of the Government for a time seemed to cast a blight upon their prospects. In after years Professor Morse declared that but for the indomitable energy and faith of the friends who then supported him by their influence and money, his telegraph might have been abandoned as too expensive to be practicable. Conspicuous among his supporters was Mr. Amos Kendall, who had formerly been Postmaster-General, and who was the prime mover in forming joint-stock companies to construct and work the telegraph. On April 1st, 1845, the line from Washington to Baltimore was opened for public business, the charge being a cent (or a halfpenny) for every four characters. The first line constructed after the experimental one was that of the Magnetic Telegraph Company from Philadelphia to Norristown, Pa., a length of 14 miles, which was opened in November, 1845; it was continued to Fort Lee in the January following, and completed from Philadelphia to Baltimore on June 5, 1846.

Once fairly started, the telegraph in America made such rapid strides as soon eclipsed its progress in those countries in which it had an earlier start. Within half a dozen years about thirty Companies were formed to carry on the work of telegraphic extension, and to reap the profits of an invention which the Government could not be induced to accept. Sir Robert Inglis, in his address as President of the British Association meeting at Oxford in June, 1847, stated that he had just received a report presented to the Legislative Council and Assembly of New Brunswick relating to a project for constructing a railway and a line of telegraph from Halifax to Quebec, with reference to which he said: “Distance is time, and when by steam, whether on water or on land, personal communication is facilitated, and when orders are conveyed from one extremity of the Empire to another almost like a flash of lightning, the facility of governing a large State becomes almost equal to the facility of governing the smallest. I remember reading many years ago in the Scotsman an ingenious and able article showing how England could be governed as easily as Attica under Pericles; and I believe the same conclusion was deduced by William Cobbett from the same illustration. The system is daily extending. It was, however, in the United States of America that it was first adopted on a great scale, by Professor Morse in 1844; and it is there that it is now already developed most extensively. Lines for above 1,300 miles are in action, and connect those States with Her Majesty’s Canadian provinces; and it is in a course of development so rapid that, in the words of the Report of Mr. Wilkinson to Sir W. E. Colebrooke, the Governor of New Brunswick, no schedule of telegraphic lines can now be relied upon for a month in succession, as hundreds of miles may be added in that space of time. So easy of attainment does such a result appear to be, and so lively is the interest felt in its accomplishment, that it is scarcely doubtful that the whole of the populous parts of the United States will, within two or three years, be covered with a network like a spider’s web, suspending its principal threads upon important points, along the sea board of the Atlantic on one side, and upon similar points along the Lake Frontier on the other. I am indebted to the same Report for another fact, which I think of equal interest: The confidence in the efficiency of telegraphic communication has now become so established, that the most important commercial transactions daily transpire, by its means, between correspondents several hundred miles apart. Ocular evidence of this was afforded by a communication a few minutes old between a merchant in Toronto and his correspondent in New York, distant about 632 miles. When the Hibernia steamer arrived in Boston in January, 1847, with the news of the scarcity in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of Europe, and with heavy orders for agricultural produce, the farmers in the interior of the State of New York—informed of the state of things by the Magnetic Telegraph—were thronging the streets of Albany with innumerable team-loads of grain almost as quickly after the arrival of the steamer at Boston as the news of that arrival could ordinarily have reached them. I may add that, irrespectively of all its advantages to the general community, the system appears to give already a fair return of interest to the individuals or companies who have invested their capital in its application. I cannot refer to the extent of the lines of the electric telegraph in America without an increased feeling of regret that in England this great discovery has been so inadequately adopted. So far at least as the capital is concerned, the two greatest of our railway companies have not, I believe, yet carried the electric telegraph further from London than to Watford and Slough.”

About the same time Professor Morse stated that, as the result of improvements in his telegraph, the President’s entire message on the subject of the war with Mexico was transmitted with perfect accuracy at the rate of ninety-nine letters per minute. His skilful operators in Washington and Baltimore printed these characters at the rate of 98, 101, 111, and one of them actually printed 117 letters per minute. It was pointed out that as an expert penman seldom writes legibly more than 100 letters per minute, the Morse telegraph then about equalled the most expeditious mode of recording thought.

Between 1844 and 1855 the telegraph was used for another purpose which was regarded in the world of science as of great importance. In 1839 Professor Morse, while in Paris, suggested to Arago that the telegraph might be used for determining the difference of longitude between places with an accuracy previously unattainable. The first experiment for the determination of longitude was made in 1844 at Baltimore, and fully realised the expectation of Professor Morse. The Battle Monument Square, Baltimore, was found to be 1 m. 34 sec. ·868 east of the capital at Washington, a difference of three quarters of a second from the former results recorded in the American Almanac. This may appear a trifling matter to unscientific readers, but a short explanation will show its importance. The latitude of any place—its distance from the equator north or south—can be accurately determined by astronomical observation; but its longitude, or distance east or west of any particular place agreed upon as a meridional standard, such as Greenwich, was often determined with difficulty. It is well known that in the diurnal rotation of the earth every portion of its surface is turned towards the sun once in twenty-four hours, and that noon occurs at places east of Greenwich earlier than at Greenwich, and later at places west of Greenwich. The difference between the local time at any particular place and Greenwich time is the longitude of that place from Greenwich; but much difficulty was formerly experienced in ascertaining the exact time at both places at the instant adopted for comparison. At sea it was formerly determined by elaborate observations of the position of the moon among the stars; and latterly both on land and sea it was generally done by carrying a good chronometer from the one place to the other, the difference between the local time and the Greenwich time recorded by the chronometer giving the longitude. But the exactness of this method depended upon the accuracy of the chronometer, and the rapidity with which it could be carried from one place to the other. But now by means of the telegraph, when the wire is kept clear for the purpose, the time at one place can be instantaneously transmitted to another place; and if the local time at each place is correct, the difference gives the longitude.

It is worthy of remark that just about a century before the invention of the Morse telegraph the marine chronometer was invented by John Harrison, an ingenious cabinet maker, expressly for the purpose of determining longitude at sea; and he was induced to do so by the British Government offering a reward of 20,000l. 15,000l. or 10,000l. for a discovery which might prove successful in determining longitude at sea. Now Morse, without any offer of reward, invented his telegraph, and not only suggested its use for determining longitude on land, but himself directed the first experiment between Washington and Baltimore to prove its practicability for that purpose. In 1847 it was announced that the relative longitudes of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington had been determined by means of the telegraph, and it was added that two important facts, before known theoretically, were then practically demonstrated, that a clock in New York could be compared with another at a distance of 200 miles quite as accurately as two clocks in adjoining rooms, and that “the time required for the electric fluid to travel from New York to Washington and back again, a distance of 450 miles, is so small a fraction of a second that it is inappreciable to the most practised observer.” So well was this method appreciated that Lieutenant Maury, of the United States Navy, stated in 1849, that as the electric telegraph then extended through all the States of the Union, except perhaps Arkansas, Texas, and one other frontier, “a splendid field is presented for doing the world a service by connecting, for difference of longitude through means of magnetic telegraph and clock, all the principal points of this country with the Observatory at Washington. In anticipation of such extension of the wires, I ordered an instrument for the purpose, and it has recently arrived. It is intended to determine latitude also—so that by its means and this clock I hope, during the year, to know pretty accurately the geographical position of Montreal, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, &c., and their difference of longitude from Washington, quite as correctly as the difference between Greenwich and Paris has been established by the usual method and after many years of observation.”

The telegraphic method was first tried in England in May, 1853, when the Astronomer Royal ascertained the difference of longitude between the observatories of Greenwich and Cambridge. On the Continent Professor Encke in the same year determined the difference of longitude between Berlin and Frankfort-on-the-Main; and the difference between Greenwich and Paris was determined in 1854.

In 1853, eight years after the opening of the first line of telegraph in America, there were 25,000 miles of wire erected at a cost of 1,000,000l., and it was reported that in working these lines there were consumed 720 tons of zinc, worth 12,000l., over 1,000,000 lbs. of nitric acid, worth 24,000l., and 6,000l. worth of mercury in a year. The most distant points then connected by telegraph were the cities of Halifax (Nova Scotia) and Quebec with New Orleans, a length of 2,000 miles. The distance by telegraph between New York and New Orleans was 3,000 miles, and messages from the one town to the other were delivered in an hour. A report published in 1853, stated that by the aid of the telegraph the vast republic of America, 3,000 miles long by 3,000 broad, could be as easily managed and governed as a single city, and that “a long experience in America,” with some dozen different lines of telegraph, established the fact that the velocity of the electric current was about 15,400 miles per second. The time occupied in transmission between Boston and Bangor having been exactly measured, it was found to be the sixteen-thousandth part of a second, the velocity of the current being at the rate of 16,000 miles per second, or about 600 miles per second more than the average of other experiments in that country.

In 1886 it was computed that on the telegraph lines of the United States 30,000 Morse sounders were in daily use, and that the total consumption of copper in the local batteries amounted to about 750,000 lbs. per annum, which cost 6,300l., together with 100,000 lbs. of zinc which cost 1,200l.

FIG. 1

FIG. 2

A short description of the Morse apparatus in its improved form may be conveniently given here. The illustration shows the transmitting key in its simplest shape. It is evident that by merely depressing the handle till the upper lever comes in contact with the lower bar of metal at the point A, a current of electricity will flow through the point of contact from the battery wire to the telegraph wire. In order to break the contact or circuit, the operator has simply to desist from depressing the handle of the upper lever, which is instantly raised from contact by the action of the spring at the other end. The operator can thus make and break the circuit at pleasure, and according to the frequency and duration of the act of depressing the handle will be the number and length of the signs produced at the far end of the telegraph wire. A long and strong depression of the handle would allow the passage of sufficient electricity to make a long sign; and if the operator next made two short depressions, giving two short signs, the three together, thus — - -, would mean D. If the receiving instrument called the Sounder were in use, instead of the Recorder, long and short sounds would be produced in proportion to the quantity of electricity transmitted, instead of long and short ink marks. The Sounder is a simpler instrument than the Recorder, and is in more general use. The chief part of its operation is effected by means of the relay or local battery. A simple illustration shows its essential parts. When a current of electricity from the transmitter comes along the telegraph wire, it enters the electro-magnet E M, which forms the central part of the apparatus, and which, being thus electrified, attracts to itself the armature C, just above it. In this way the moveable lever, B C D, is drawn down till its point, D, touches the point of the lower screw, L, which is saturated with electricity from the local battery. Immediately the end of the lever, D, touches the point of the lower screw, L, electricity flows from the latter into the former, the quantity of electricity being proportionate to the length of the contact, or, to use a more technical term, to the time that the local circuit is thus complete; but the instant the current sent along the telegraph wire ceases, the electro-magnet, E M, becomes powerless, the end of the moveable lever, D, is drawn, by the spring S, away from the lower screw, L, and strikes against the higher screw, H, thus making a clicking sound, the loudness and duration of which are proportionate to the current of electricity originally sent; but at the same time the original current, especially on long lines, would be quite inadequate to affect the lever with the strength that it acquires from the local battery during its momentary contact with the lower screw, L. The loud and feeble sounds combined with long and short intervals between them represent letters of the alphabet, but it requires a practised ear to interpret them. In the Recorder, the arrival of a current in the electro-magnet and the consequent lowering of the lever brings an ink siphon in contact with a moving strip of paper and thus produces a dash; and when the current ceases the lever is raised, thus withdrawing the ink siphon from the paper; so that the dash produced is long or short in proportion to the current sent along the telegraph wire.

Such is the simple but ingenious apparatus which, by its universal use, has made the name of Morse known throughout the civilised world. Its invention, however, was not the only telegraphic achievement with which he was connected. Mention has already been made of his first attempt at submarine telegraphy; and in later years he actively promoted the carrying out of the greatest enterprise of that description.

In 1853 it was stated, in certain American and English newspapers, that a recent discovery had been made in telegraphing which might work as great a revolution in the world of letters and commerce as had already been effected by the original application of electricity or magnetism to the purposes of telegraphic communication. It was generally assumed till then that there was a limit to the force of electric currents, and that they could not be made strong enough to be sent across the Atlantic. Under that impression it had been proposed to construct a submarine telegraph between Great Britain and the United States by a circuitous route across the various straits and channels lying between the intermediate islands of the North Atlantic Ocean, commencing at the north of Scotland, proceeding by the Shetland and Faroe Islands to Iceland, a distance of 300 miles, next landing on the shores of Greenland and going across land to Davis Strait, after crossing which it would reach the mainland of Labrador. In 1852 it was announced that “the vast enterprise” of connecting the Old and New Worlds by this route had been commenced by sinking the first line in Transatlantic waters between Cape Lormentine, New Brunswick, and Carlton Head on Prince Edward Island; and next year it was pompously announced as a new discovery that the electric current might be sent to “any conceivable distance,” and the newspapers, in publishing the announcement, said it could not any longer be doubted that the ocean telegraph would be realised, and that “a line of wires will encircle the whole earth, bringing all parts of it into instantaneous communication with each other. It is impossible for any human foresight to estimate or predict even the results of such a communication, and we trust that the Governments of the United States and Great Britain will take up the matter of an oceanic line on a scale commensurate with its importance, providing such a number of distinct wires enclosed in one cable as will supply the necessities of commerce and intercourse between Europe and America.”

Early in 1854 Mr. Cyrus Field took an active interest in the project for laying a cable in mid ocean between America and Europe; and one of the first things he did was to send for Professor Morse and to consult him as to the practicability of telegraphing such a long distance. The Professor called on Mr. Field and entered into a full exposition of the subject, assuring him that the project was practicable. Next year the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company was formed, and they obtained from the Government of Newfoundland an act of incorporation, a guarantee of interest on 50,000l. of the company’s bonds, and a grant of fifty square miles of land on the island of Newfoundland. The Governments of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, and the State of Maine, as well as those of Great Britain and the United States, also made substantial grants. In 1855 an attempt was made to connect St. John’s with the mainland, but this was not successfully accomplished till 1856, and the line was then continued across the island to Trinity Bay, the American terminus of the Atlantic telegraph. In 1856 Mr. Field visited England for the purpose of enlisting English capitalists in the enterprise, and his mission was so successful that in 1857 the Atlantic Telegraph Company was formed. It acquired all the rights and privileges of the New York, Newfoundland, and London Company; and within a month raised a capital of 350,000l. The British Government offered to the company the use of the war vessel Agamemnon for the purpose of laying a cable, while the United States Government in like manner offered their newest and finest vessel—the Niagara—which was 715 feet long and 56 feet wide. The main question at issue was whether electric signals could be transmitted through a cable 2,300 miles in length. At the close of 1856 Professor Morse, who was then regarded as the greatest authority on the subject, calculated that ten words could be transmitted in a minute. In a report which he furnished to the company he explained that gutta-percha covered submarine wires did not transmit in the same way as simple insulated conductors, that they had to be charged like a Leyden jar before they could transmit at all, and that the velocity of transmission was consequently much slower than in ordinary conductors. In the Leyden jar—a glass vessel covered with tinfoil both inside and outside—the electricity, entering at the neck, charges the interior metallic coating, and at the same time induces or generates electricity in the outside coating, the electricity on the one side being positive, and on the other side negative. In a submarine cable the electricity charged into the wire behaves in a manner similar to that in a Leyden jar; in the one case the gutta-percha is the insulator; in the other case it is the glass jar. Professor Morse pointed out that as the opposite electricities attracted each other in the wire of a cable, the current was thus retarded in its rate of motion. This inductive retardation was dreaded in a long cable; but Professor Morse suggested that the velocity of the transmission of signals along insulated submerged wires could be enormously increased, from the rate of one signal in two seconds to eight in one second, by making each alternate signal with a current of different quality, positive following negative, and negative following positive.

In April, 1857, the Niagara came to England, where the first Atlantic cable was being manufactured. Professor Morse came too; and the day after he disembarked at Gravesend he entered fully into the prospects and capabilities of the cable. He was fond of assuring English inquirers as to the desire in America for a cable, that it was the ambition of the people of the United States to know what was done in England before it took place; as an event happening in London at noon would, if the cable were laid, be published in New York on the morning of the same day. But he had more solid reasons than that to give in support of the undertaking. He stated that he was anxious to see the cable in active operation under the ocean because he had a firm conviction that then the chances of conflict and of misunderstanding between Englishmen and Americans must be diminished in an incalculable degree. He felt sure that it would be used for no hostile purpose, and that when New York would become a suburb of London, and Washington the western half of Westminster, an American war would be about as likely a thing as Camberwell organising an attack upon Camden Town, or Peckham making a raid upon Pimlico. All wars, he said, arise in ignorance and misunderstanding of the real objects and interests of the race by which they are waged: to increase the facilities for an interchange of ideas, for the opening out of commercial relations, and for the development of intelligence, must be to diminish the need of appeals from reason to force; and a small cable laid quietly at the bottom of the Atlantic at a cost of 350,000l. would do more for the maintenance of international peace and for the furtherance of national prosperity than an expenditure of 10,000,000l. a year on each side of the Atlantic in the construction and commissioning of such armed Leviathans as would carry and pioneer the electrical rope to its resting-place. In reporting these words of Professor Morse the directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company said the shareholders would not be unwilling to receive his “opinion and assurance upon that point as the first instalment of their interest.” Equally complimentary was the appreciation they expressed of his opinion as to the feasibility of the undertaking. In 1856 when it was determined to make experiments on long lengths of telegraph wires for the purpose of proving that intelligence could be transmitted for long distances, it was proposed to provide the requisite length of cable by joining together the underground lines of the English and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, extending from London to Dublin viâ Dumfries. These lines were 600 miles long, and were capable of forming a continuous length of 5,000 miles. The directors stated that every possible precaution was taken in this trial to guard against accidental causes of error by the introduction of test instruments at each available point of junction, and “to crown the whole, the veteran electrician, Professor Morse, of the United States, was present at the operations and witnessed the result.” On the night of October 2nd, “the conclave of experimenters” met at the office of the Magnetic Telegraph Company in Old Broad Street, London, and made their experiments on a circuit of subterranean or submarine wires which was considered to present the nearest approach to the working of a real and continuous submarine cable. The arrangements were considered perfectly satisfactory, and the result was described as an unquestionable triumph. By means of one of Morse’s ordinary receiving instruments signals were distinctly telegraphed through 2,000 miles of wire at the rate of 210, 241, and on one occasion 270 per minute. Elated at the realisation of his anticipations, Professor Morse wrote to Mr. Cyrus Field, stating that “there could be no question that, with a cable containing a single conducting wire, of a size not exceeding that through which we worked, and with equal insulation, it would be easy to telegraph from Ireland to Newfoundland at a speed of at least from eight to ten words per minute. Take it at ten words in a minute, and allowing ten words for name and address, we can safely calculate upon the transmission of a twenty-word message in three minutes—twenty such messages in an hour, 480 in the twenty-four hours, or 14,400 words per day. Such are the capabilities of a single wire cable fairly and moderately computed. It is, however, evident to me that by improvements in the arrangement of the signals themselves, aided by the adoption of a code or system constructed upon the principles of the best nautical code, we may at least double the speed in the transmission of our messages. In one word, the doubts are solved; the difficulties are overcome; success is within our reach; and the great feat of the century must shortly be accomplished.” The rate of transmission through the Atlantic cable was eventually from ten to twenty words a minute, but great improvements had to be made before the higher speed was attained.

In July, 1857, the Niagara went to Birkenhead to take on board one half of the cable which had been manufactured there, and having shipped her peculiar freight she proceeded to Queenstown, where she was joined by the Agamemnon, which had shipped the other half of the cable in the Thames. Off Queenstown the two halves of the cable in the ships were united so as to form a circuit of 2,500 miles. When charged with electricity it was found that a current flowed through the cable. Indeed, a distinct message was telegraphed through it, but the rate of transmitting signals was slow. One current occupied a second and three-quarters in passing through; but when it was found that three successive signals could be transmitted in two seconds, the prospect was considered satisfactory. The tests being so far successful, it was at first intended that the two vessels should proceed to mid ocean, whence, having joined together the two halves of the cable, each vessel could proceed towards the opposite shores. At the last hour, however, it was deemed more prudent to start paying out from the Irish coast. Accordingly, on August 4th, 1857, the two cable ships, each attended by three smaller vessels, left Queenstown, and arrived in Valencia Bay on the following day. After some inaugural ceremonies, the telegraph squadron started to pay out the cable on August 7th. Professor Morse was on board the Niagara, which began the work of paying out. On the morning of the fourth day (August 11th) the cable parted, and the 335 miles paid out appeared to be lost at the bottom of the ocean. In a letter describing the accident, Professor Morse said that at the time it occurred “there was a moderately heavy sea, which caused the ship’s stern to rise several feet and to fall to the same degree; when the stern fell, the cable under its immense strain went down into the water easily and quickly, but when the stern was lifted by the irresistible power of the succeeding wave the force exerted upon the cable under such circumstances would have parted a cable of four times the strength. Hence it is no wonder that our cable, subjected to such a tremendous and unnatural strain, should snap like a pack-thread. It did snap, and in an instant the whole course and plan of our future proceedings were necessarily changed. How many visions of wealth, of fame, and of pleasure were dependent for their realisation on the integrity of that little nerve thread, spinning out like a spider’s web from the stern of our noble ship and (in view of the mighty force of steam and waves and winds and mechanism brought to bear upon it) quite as frail. Yet with all its frailties, nothing could exceed the beauty of its quiet passage to its ocean bed from the moment we had joined it to the shore end till the fatal mistake of not easing the breaks which caused the breaking of it asunder. The effect on shipboard was very striking. It parted just before daylight. All hands rushed to the deck, but there was no confusion; the telegraph machinery had stopped; the men gathered in mournful groups, and their tones were sad and voices as low as if a death had occurred on board. I believe there was not a man in the ship who did not feel really as melancholy as if a comrade had been lost overboard.” On the vessels returning to Plymouth the chief electricians connected with the enterprise, Mr. W. Whitehouse, Professor Morse, and Professor William Thomson, issued a report certifying that “every experiment which we have made upon the cable, every test to which we have subjected it, both for its insulating and conducting power, has uniformly resulted in demonstrating the perfect fitness of the cable for its office. The treble covering of gutta-percha so entirely provides for the remote possibility of an accidental flaw occurring in the first or second coat, that all risk of defective insulation is avoided.” The directors determined to renew the attempt during a more favourable period of 1858 with certain improvements in the paying out machinery and with a greater length of cable. During the winter the whole of the cable was stored at Keyham Docks (Plymouth); and the British and American Governments having again granted the use of the same vessels, it was reshipped in the spring. The vessels first proceeded, in the last days of May, to the Bay of Biscay, where experiments were made for three days in splicing and paying out the cable, and both the mechanical and electrical tests were reported as very promising. The squadron returned to Plymouth, whence they sailed again on June 10th, 1858. While proceeding to mid ocean, where they were to join the two halves and then commence paying out, they encountered a fearful gale, and when they reached the trysting place three attempts to lay the cable proved unsuccessful. In the first attempt the cable parted after two miles and forty fathoms were paid out, in the second attempt forty-two miles and 300 fathoms, and in the third attempt 145 miles and 930 fathoms were paid out. The vessels then returned to Queenstown to replenish their coal supplies. They started again on July 12th, and having joined the cable ends together on the 29th, in mid ocean, the Niagara landed at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, on August 5th. The Agamemnon had likewise reached Valencia, all well. It was found that through the cable thus laid from shore to shore electric signals passed at the same rate as in the tests made in England; messages were transmitted for nearly a month, after which defects in insulation gradually increased. After transmitting 366 messages it ceased “to speak” on October 20th, 1858. In the latter and successful expedition Professor Morse took no active part. By that time the work which he had taken a foremost part in initiating had fallen into younger and more energetic hands, while his attention was diverted to the honours and rewards which ought to crown a well-spent life, and which are more congenial to a man in his sixty-seventh year than the carrying out of an enterprise that he had pronounced feasible sixteen years previously. He lived to see it made a permanent success a quarter of a century after he had first suggested it.

CHAPTER IV.

“He that has improved the virtue or advanced the happiness of one fellow-creature, he that has ascertained a single moral proposition, or added one useful experiment to natural knowledge, may be contented with his own performance, and, with respect to mortals like himself, may demand, like Augustus, to be dismissed at his departure with applause.”—Dr. Johnson.

The fate of inventors has been one of the enigmas of history. Lord Bacon has praised the justness of antiquity in awarding divine honours to inventors whose benefits might extend to the whole human race, while only heroic honours were awarded to statesmen who benefited only particular places. But even in antiquity the honours paid to inventors were generally posthumous. Horace wrote that

“Though living virtue we despise;

When dead, we praise it to the skies.”

And a later Roman writer endeavoured to explain this anomalous treatment by stating that “we envy the living by whose merit we think ourselves overwhelmed, but we venerate departed merit because we are edified by it.” Human nature has not changed much since the Augustan age; but in nothing perhaps has public feeling in our own time undergone such a revolution as in respect to inventors. Some may think that this change can be accounted for by the greatness of the benefits which inventors have wrought in our day. But there have been great inventors before now. “If one looks back,” says Mr. J. L. Ricardo, “to the times when the most important inventions were produced, it appears they were all made without even a patent, so far as we can discover. For instance, arithmetic, writing, and all the first great inventions, to which we are so habituated that we scarce think they have been invented any more than the flowers or trees, yet were mighty inventions in their time. Paper was invented in the year 1200, oil painting in the year 1297, glass in 1310, printing in 1430, and gunpowder in 1450. All these inventions, or very many of them, were made by men without artificial stimulus, often at the peril of their lives, when their reward was not a monopoly, but perhaps the stake or the gibbet.” It may be observed, however, that most of these “great inventions” might more accurately be described as the result of the discovery of natural laws, and hence they were generally ascribed to alchemy or sorcery; whereas in our day the inventions that have been most beneficial have been of a mechanical description. There is scarcely a machine now in use that is not an invention of modern times; and while many of the discoveries, called inventions, of former ages were made accidentally, who would ever think of saying that the complicated machinery in use nowadays was invented by accident? Obviously it has been the result of labour, skill, and knowledge; and its effect is to save labour and supersede skill. It is probably the greater effort required in the production of modern machinery, and its obvious utility when in operation, that have secured for inventors an honourable place in public estimation, as well as more adequate remuneration for their services. At all events such was the case with the Morse telegraph.

Not that its success was unalloyed with detraction. After its utility was fully established, one company after another contested its originality or the validity of his patent rights, which had consequently to be protected by costly law suits. The first of these took place at Louisville, Kentucky, in August, 1848. The owners of the Morse system arranged to construct a line from that town to Nashville, Tennessee; and Henry O’Reilly, supported by a company, constructed a rival line, and called it the People’s Line, which they at first tried to work by a piece of electrical apparatus that was only a modification of the Morse system, the principle of which they contended they were justified in using on the ground that it did not originate with Morse. After a patent trial of the case, the court granted an injunction against the O’Reilly Company, and sustained the validity of the Morse patent. The Supreme Court of the United States, on appeal, confirmed this decision in January, 1854. The court held it as established by evidence that “early in the spring of 1837 Morse invented his plan for combining two or more electric or galvanic circuits, with independent batteries, for the purpose of overcoming the diminished force of electro-magnetism in long circuits, that there is reasonable ground for believing that he had so far completed his invention that the whole process, combination, powers, and machinery were arranged in his mind, and that the delay in bringing it out arose from want of means.” The court also held that “neither the inquiries Morse made nor the information or advice he received from men of science, in the course of his researches, impair his right to the character of an inventor. No invention can possibly be made, consisting of a combination of different elements of power, without a thorough knowledge of the properties of each of them, and the mode in which they operate upon each other. A very high degree of scientific knowledge and the nicest skill in the mechanic arts are combined in the electro-magnetic telegraph and were necessary to bring it into successful operation. It is the high praise of Professor Morse that he has been able by a new combination of known powers, of which electro-magnetism is one, to discover a method by which intelligible marks or signs may be printed at a distance.” Such were the sort of compliments that the Supreme Court bestowed upon Professor Morse, while they amply vindicated the validity of his patents.

Another case was heard at Philadelphia in September, 1851. It was an action brought by the Magnetic Telegraph Company, who used the Morse patent, against Henry J. Rogers and others who worked a line of telegraph from Washington to New York on the system of Alexander Bain. This ingenious but unlucky invention, which Mr. Bain made in 1846, was represented as capable of transmitting from 1,000 to 2,000 letters a minute. By means of a machine, holes were stamped in a long strip of paper, and each hole or group of holes represented a particular letter. The paper was coiled on a wooden roller, from which it passed to a metal roller; the mechanism was so arranged that two metallic points underneath the paper passed through the holes as they moved along, and thus touching the metal of the roller, imparted sufficient electricity to make a signal at the distant end of the wire; but when the points only touched the paper no electricity passed. This rapid alternation was made to indicate signals. In the recipient apparatus, which marked the signals at the distant end of the connecting wire, the strip of paper used was first soaked in dilute sulphuric acid, and then in a solution of prussiate of potash; two metallic points pressed on that paper, and when electricity passed through these points, it discoloured the chemically prepared paper and left a number of dark spots on it; but when no electricity passed no spots were produced. In America it was alleged that those who used this apparatus violated Morse’s patent by forming their alphabet and figures (though using chemicals instead of ink) in the same way that Morse did—by dots and lines, although the same dots and lines did not in both systems represent the same letter or figure. The claim of Professor Morse as the inventor of the principle of the dot and dash alphabet was consequently disputed by the defendants. But the judges held that there was no one person whose invention had been spoken of by witnesses or referred to in any book as involving the principle of Morse’s discovery but must yield precedence to him, and that neither Steinheil, nor Cooke and Wheatstone, nor Davy, nor Dyer, nor Henry had, when the Morse invention was consummated early in the spring of 1837, made a recording telegraph of any sort. In this case the evidence filled over a thousand printed pages; and in other trials the evidence filled many hundreds of pages.

Only in one case did a rival inventor establish valid claims to originality. This was Mr. Royal E. House, the inventor of the printing telegraph, which was described in 1851, when it came into use, as one of the wonders of the age. He invented a machine which, when a message was transmitted by electric currents over a single wire, printed the words in Roman letters that any person could read. For that invention House applied for a patent in 1846, but was refused it on the ground that his specification in some points clashed with that of Morse. It was not till towards the end of 1848 that he got a patent which dated from April, 1846. He was a self-taught man, who was confined to his dwelling-house with an affection of the eyes during most of the six years that he had been engaged in constructing his instrument. The sending apparatus for despatching messages resembled a pianette, in which each key represented a letter of the alphabet, and the sender had simply to press down the key representing any desired letter, and the receiving apparatus at the other end of the telegraph wire printed that letter on a strip of paper. The electric current moved a wheel around the edge of which were the letters of the alphabet in type properly inked; and when the particular letter desired came round to the point nearest the paper tape, the letter was by self-acting mechanism pressed against it, causing the letter to be printed on the tape. It was stated that 160 letters could be transmitted and printed in that way in a minute. The first line of telegraph worked by the House apparatus was completed in August, 1850, by the Boston and New York Telegraph Company. Proceedings were at once taken against that company by the owner of the Morse patent, of which the House apparatus was alleged to be an infringement. Judge Woodbury, after hearing much evidence and argument, came to the conclusion that the two methods of telegraphing differed as much as writing differed from printing. He said the Morse apparatus was less complicated and more easily comprehended; it could be readily understood by most mechanics and men of science; while the House machine was so much more difficult to comprehend in its operations that it required days, if not weeks, to master it. At the same time he declared that House had given “letters to lightning,” as well as “lightning to letters.” While he admitted that the principle of the House telegraph was not new, although now ingeniously applied and worked by a new power, he gave Morse every credit for originality in his invention, and decided in the end that the one was not an infringement of the other.

The Morse alphabet, the originality of which was practically undisputed, has not only been found universally useful for telegraphic purposes, but has been successfully used for signalling intelligence where no electric telegraph was available. Its characters have been exhibited from lighthouses in long and short flashes of electric light to tell the lonely mariner in the darkness of night the name of the coast he was passing; while in lands where the electric telegraph is unknown it has enabled a revival of the old semaphore system to be worked with great advantages. When the British squadron entered Burmah in the end of 1885, communication was kept up between the different portions of the forces by means of the heliostat and heliograph, sun-signalling instruments, which displayed to distant stations dots or dashes of light forming the Morse alphabet. In the heliograph the signalling was effected by altering the angle of the mirror which reflected the light; while in the heliostat the requisite flash was transmitted by opening temporarily a shutter, which when shut obscured the light. The Morse alphabet thus enables distant stations to speak by means of light as well as electricity.

At the time when the laying of the Atlantic cable was absorbing public attention, Professor Morse was enjoying the fruits of his previous labours. Rewards and honours were freely bestowed on him. During his long and often disheartening struggle with adversity, he was not without honour in his own and in other countries. In 1835 he was elected a corresponding member of the Historical Institute of France; in 1837 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Belgium; in 1839 he received the great silver medal of the Paris Academy of Industry for his invention of the telegraph; in 1841 he was made a corresponding member of the Washington Institute for the Promotion of Science; in 1842 he was awarded the gold medal of the American Institute for his experiments demonstrating submarine telegraphy; in 1845 he was made a corresponding member of the Archæological Society of Belgium; in 1847 he was made an honorary Doctor of Laws of Yale College; in 1849 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, and so on.

What he wanted during these years was emolument, and now that had come to him after long years of patient expectation. Though his patent was not put in profitable operation till 1846, he received before the date of its expiration, 1854, a sum of 90,874 dollars, and during the seven following years, for which it was renewed, over 70,000 dollars. His fame had now become world-wide, and foreign honours were bestowed upon him by the chief European sovereigns. In June, 1856, he visited England, and was delighted to meet once more with several of his old artist friends: men who had befriended him when in humble circumstances he showed a special pleasure in meeting now, when he had attained pre-eminent success in another vocation. From London he proceeded to Copenhagen, where the King of Denmark, Frederick VII., presented him with the Cross of a Knight of the Danneborg. He was thence invited to Russia by the Emperor Alexander II., who sent his carriage to convey him from the quay on landing to the Imperial Palace, where he was treated as an honoured guest. Then he went to Berlin, where he again met the author of the Cosmos, Alexander von Humboldt, who entertained him hospitably, and presented him with a portrait of himself on the margin of which he had written as an inscription the homage of his high and affectionate esteem for Mr. S. F. B. Morse, “whose philosophical and useful labours have rendered his name illustrious in two worlds.” Returning to London in September, he was next month entertained at a public banquet in the Albion Tavern on the same day that he received the announcement that the Emperor Napoleon had made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. At that banquet Mr. W. F. Cooke stated that Professor Morse stood alone in America as the originator and carrier out of a grand conception; but that not content with giving the benefit of his conception to his own country and Canada, he threatened to go still further, and, if Englishmen would not do it, to carry telegraphic communication across the Atlantic. Dr. O’Shaughnessy stated at the banquet that he had made a journey from India to England in order to introduce into India the system of telegraphing which had been perfected by Professor Morse. It was this gentleman who, according to his own statement, erected in April and May, 1839, “the first long line of telegraph ever constructed in any country” in the vicinity of Calcutta. His line was twenty-one miles long, and included 7,000 feet of river circuit. In after years he was accustomed to state that it was the experiments performed on that line which removed all reasonable doubts regarding the practicability of working electric telegraphs through enormous distances,—“a question then and for three years later disputed by high authorities, and regarded generally with contemptuous scepticism.” After the experiments were completed and published, the line was taken down. It may therefore be said of Dr. O’Shaughnessy that he was in a double sense the father of Indian telegraphy, and as such he received the honour of knighthood.

It thus appears that the three men who were the pioneers in practical telegraphy were Morse in America, Wheatstone in England, and O’Shaughnessy in India. In after ages it may be a question of biographical interest whether these three men, whose triumphs took place in scenes so far apart, ever met together. A similar question has been asked of another constellation of great men. “It is a remarkable fact,” says Sir David Brewster, “in the history of astronomy, that three of its most distinguished professors were contemporaries. Galileo was the contemporary of Tycho during thirty-seven years and of Kepler during fifty-nine years of his life. Galileo was born seven years before Kepler, and survived him nearly the same time. We have not learned that the intellectual triumvirate of the age enjoyed any opportunity of mutual congratulation. What a privilege it would have been to have contrasted the aristocratic dignity of Tycho with the reckless ease of Kepler, and the manly and impetuous mien of the Italian sage.” It is possible that three or four centuries hence similar speculations may be indulged in with respect to the group of remarkable men who made the electric telegraph a practical success in different parts of the world. It may therefore be worth while here to state that there is no record of Professor Wheatstone and Professor Morse ever having met personally either for mutual congratulation or recrimination. In several respects they were men of like qualities—modest, unselfish, persevering, versatile, and ingenious in everything except extemporaneous public speaking—a similitude which might perhaps be held to account for the fact that there was no love lost between them, if it be true, as Saint Pierre contends, that men are more attached to those qualities that are the complement of their own than to those that are the counterpart of their own—an observation that would not apply to the three professors of astronomy. Anyhow, the absence of Professor Wheatstone from the banquet given to Professor Morse in London in 1856 was publicly commented on at the time in the leading English journal, to which a member of the committee wrote, in reply, that “it was intended to pay all honour to Professor Wheatstone, but to the regret of every one at the dinner he was unable to attend: his pre-eminent merits as an electrical engineer were repeatedly acknowledged during the evening, and always with the warmest reception by the whole company.” Nevertheless, in the calm perspective of history posterity will probably regard that opportunity for mutual congratulation as a privilege that ought not to have been lost.

Professor Morse said in 1856 that it was not in England alone that he had experienced unwonted kindness, but in every place he had visited,—in Copenhagen, in St. Petersburgh, in Berlin, throughout Germany, Belgium, France, he had everywhere received distinguished marks of regard—and that he was unable to recall a single unpleasant occurrence to mar the gratifying impression which he carried with him to his Transatlantic home. The first foreign honour he received as an acknowledgment of his invention came from the Sultan of Turkey, who sent him the decoration, set in diamonds, of the Order of Glory, and this was the first decoration which the Sultan conferred on an American citizen. Italy bestowed on him the Cross of a Knight of Saints Lazaro and Mauritio; Prussia the Gold Medal of Scientific Merit in a gold snuff-box; Spain the Cross of Knight Commander de Numero of the Order of Isabella; Austria the Gold Medal of Scientific Merit; and Portugal the Cross of a Knight of the Tower and Sword.

In 1858 he again left New York and went to Paris, where his fellow-countrymen entertained him at a banquet. A movement was then set on foot to make him some recompense for the use of his invention in Europe. At a conference of delegates of ten leading Governments, held in Paris to consider the subject, Count Walewski said that the honorary distinctions which several sovereigns had conferred on Professor Morse had beyond doubt been appreciated by him as valuable marks of high esteem; but these had been insufficient to supply the place of the pecuniary compensation which his sacrifices and his labours seemed destined to procure him, and which were so much the more justly called for, since electro-magnetic telegraphing,—independently of the immense services which it renders by the rapidity of transmitting news and correspondence,—also brings to the Governments that have a monopoly of it profits in money which are already considerable, and must continue to increase. With a conviction that there was justice as well as generosity in acceding to the claim of Mr. Morse, who was now subject to the infirmities of age, after devoting the whole of his small fortune to the experiments and voyages necessary to arrive at the discovery and application of his process, the Emperor’s Government had solicited the various States, to whose gratitude Professor Morse had a right, to contribute to the remuneration due to him. It was agreed that the different Governments should contribute in proportion to the number of instruments that they had in use; and it was found that they had altogether 1,284 Morse instruments in operation, of which France had the highest number, namely 462. On September 1st, 1858, Count Walewski addressed to him the following letter from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs:—“I have the honour to announce with lively satisfaction that a sum of 400,000 francs will be remitted to you in four annuities, in the name of France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, the Holy See, Sweden, Tuscany, and Turkey, as an honorary gratuity, and as a reward, altogether personal, of your useful labours. Nothing can better mark than this collective act of reward the sentiment of public gratitude which your invention has so justly excited. The Emperor had already given you a testimonial of his high esteem when he conferred on you, more than a year ago, the decoration of a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. You will find a new mark of it in the initiative which His Majesty wished that his Government should take on this occasion, and the announcement I now make to you is a brilliant proof of the eager and sympathetic response that his proposition has met with from the States I have just enumerated.”

The latter years of the Professor’s life were mostly spent in retirement at his country residence—a delightful house, near Poughkeepsie, on the eastern bank of the Hudson, where he appeared to possess everything that could promote his comfort or gratify his taste. It was an Italian villa, called Locust Grove, surrounded by very picturesque grounds containing deep ravines and lofty forest trees. Here he cultivated beautiful gardens, and adorned the spot with all the chasteness of an artist’s taste. Here he was surrounded by a lively and affectionate family. Here he delighted to entertain his old friends with accounts of his early struggles and disappointments. Here he was placed in communication with the busy world of work and thought by means of the agency which his own genius had created—the Morse telegraph. But here, amid the repose of Nature, he was not idle. In the sunshine of fortune and fame he was as sympathetic and kind as when under the chilly blasts of adversity. He knew well that

“’Tis easy to resign a toilsome place

But not to manage leisure with a grace;

Absence of occupation is not rest,

A mind quite vacant is a mind distress’d.”

Much of his leisure time was spent in assisting struggling inventors and artists, and in doing works of charity. He purposely devoted one-tenth of his income to Christian benevolence, and in honour of his father he gave 10,000 dollars as an endowment for a Morse lectureship on the relation of the Bible to the sciences. Occasionally he was drawn from his retirement to receive some tribute of respect from his fellow-countrymen; for in his own country where no titles or decorations are conferred, the sunset of his useful life was made radiant by some exceptional marks of public favour.

On the eve of the last day of 1868 he was entertained at a public banquet in Delmonico’s, New York, when some of the most eminent men in the United States paid high tributes to his genius. In the toast of “Our Guest,” Professor Morse was described as the man of science who explored the laws of Nature, wrested electricity from her embrace, and made it a missionary in the cause of human progress. Professor Morse was as rich in humility as his admirers were in eulogy. He said that, in tracing the birth and pedigree of the American telegraph, “American is not the highest term of the series that connects the past with the present. There is at least one higher term,—the highest of all,—which cannot and must not be ignored. If not a sparrow falls to the ground without a definite purpose in the plans of Infinite Wisdom, can the creation of an instrument so vitally affecting the interests of the whole human race have an origin less humble than the Father of every good and perfect gift? I am sure I have the sympathy of such an assembly as is here gathered together, if in all humility, and in the sincerity of a grateful heart, I use the words of Inspiration in ascribing honour and praise to Him to whom first of all and most of all it is pre-eminently due. ‘Not unto us, not unto us, but to God be all the glory’—not what hath man, but ‘what hath God wrought?’”

In April, 1870, it was announced in the public press that the telegraph operators of the United States intended to raise a memorial of the father of their craft, and from all parts of civilised America subscriptions for that purpose were sent to the executive committee, of which Mr. Jas. D. Reid was the chairman. When, six months afterward, information of the movement was officially communicated to the aged Professor, he replied:—“I am astonished and deeply impressed with the evidence of such an unexampled universality of kind and friendly feeling from those whom I have loved to call my children. I know by early experience some of their trials, and can therefore sympathise with them; and I should be false to my convictions if to those who have called me Father, I should be recreant in manifesting my grateful thanks for their expressed sentiments of affection and respect.”

A bronze statue of him on a granite pedestal was erected in the Central Park, New York, and was unveiled on June 10th, 1871, in the presence of a vast multitude, by the Governor of Massachusetts, the State in which the venerable inventor was born eighty years previously.

In the course of a long and eloquent address, Mr. Cullen Bryant observed that it might be said that “the civilised world is already full of memorials which speak the merit of our friend and the grandeur and utility of his invention. Every telegraphic station is such a memorial; every message sent from one of these stations to another may be counted among the honours paid to his name. Every telegraphic wire, strung from post to post, as it hums in the wind murmurs his eulogy. But we are so constituted that we insist upon seeing the form of that brow beneath which an active, restless, creative brain devised the mechanism that was to subdue the most wayward of the elements to the service of man, and make it his obedient messenger. We require to see the eye that glittered with a thousand lofty hopes when the great discovery was made, and the lips that curled with a smile of triumph when it became certain that the lightning of the clouds would become tractable to the most delicate touch. We demand to see the hand which first strung the wire by whose means the slender currents of the electric fluid were taught the alphabet of every living language—the hand which pointed them to the spot where they were to inscribe and leave their messages. All this we have in the statue which has this day been unveiled to the eager gaze of the public, and in which the artist has so skilfully and faithfully fulfilled his task as to satisfy those who are the hardest to please—the most intimate friends of the original. On behalf of the telegraphic workers of the Continent, who have so nobly and affectionately provided it, I do now present it to the authorities of the city of New York for perpetual and loving care.” In accepting it, Mayor Hall said:—“Our Middle State city loves to remember how her citizen Franklin modestly passed the portals of the temple of electrical science; a southern city how her citizen Whitney developed a cotton empire; a western city how her citizen McCormick presented to agriculture its greatest boon; adjacent eastern cities gratefully recall how their citizens Morton and Jackson blessed humanity, and how Elias Howe lightened the toil of the poor. The genius of these Americans changed the atmosphere of social life, which now is not in any aspect the same as it was to the elder generation of this Union. Their genius blessed food, raiment, and locomotion. But New York cherishes more proudly and gratefully the thought that the genius of her citizen Morse put all these inventions into world-wide service, and is fast bringing together all the peoples who were dispersed at the Tower of Babel.”

The venerable Professor also delivered a lengthy speech, during which he said that the subscribers had “chosen to impersonate in my humble effigy an invention which, cradled upon the ocean, had its birth in an American ship. It was nursed and cherished not so much from personal as from patriotic pride. Forecasting its future, even at its birth, my most powerful stimulus to perseverance through all the perils and trials of its early days—and they were neither few nor insignificant—was the thought that it must inevitably be world-wide in its application, and, moreover, that it would everywhere be hailed as a grateful American gift to the nations. It is in this aspect of the present occasion that I look upon your proceeding as intended, not so much as homage to an individual as to the invention ‘whose lines,’ from America, ‘have gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.’... It is but a few days since, that our veritable antipodes became telegraphically united to us. We can speak to and receive an answer in a few seconds of time from Hong Kong in China, where 10 o’clock to-night here is 10 o’clock in the day there, and it is perhaps a debatable question whether their 10 o’clock is 10 to-day or 10 to-morrow. China and New York are in interlocutory communication. We know the fact, but can imagination realise it?”

At a public meeting held in the evening in the Academy of Music a unique incident occurred. At 9 o’clock all the telegraph wires in America, then measuring over 180,000 miles, with 6,000 stations, were so connected together as to be in communication with a single Morse instrument which stood on a table visible to the large audience present. By means of this instrument the following message was transmitted to all the stations:—“Greeting and thanks to the telegraph fraternity throughout the land. Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will to men.” These words were transmitted by an expert lady operator, and then Professor Morse stepped forward to the instrument, and moved the handle so as to transmit the letters S. F. B. Morse, a proceeding which evoked enthusiastic applause. Mr. W. Orton, who presided, said: “Thus the Father of the Telegraph bids farewell to his children.” The Professor afterwards delivered a long address, recounting the chief events in the early history of his invention.

His continued interest and faith in the telegraph was evinced by a characteristic letter, which he wrote on December 4th, 1871, to Mr. Cyrus Field, who was then attending a Telegraphic Convention in Rome. He said:—“The excitement occasioned by the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis has but just ceased, and I have been wholly engrossed by the various duties connected with his presence. I have wished for a few calm moments to put on paper some thoughts respecting the doings of the great Telegraphic Convention to which you are a delegate. The telegraph has now assumed such a marvellous position in human affairs throughout the world; its influences are so great and important in all the varied concerns of nations, that its efficient protection from injury has become a necessity. It is a powerful advocate for universal peace. Not that of itself it can command a ‘Peace, be still,’ to the angry waves of human passions, but that by its rapid interchange of thought and opinion it gives the opportunity of explanations to acts and to laws which in their ordinary wording often create doubt and suspicion. Were there no means of quick explanation, it is readily seen that doubt and suspicion, working on the susceptibilities of the public mind, would engender misconception, hatred, and strife. How important, then, that in the intercourse of nations there should be the ready means at hand for prompt correction and explanation! Could there not be passed in the great International Convention some resolution to the effect that in whatever condition, whether of peace or war between nations, the telegraph should be deemed a sacred thing, to be by common consent effectually protected, both on land and beneath the waters? In the interest of human happiness, of that ‘Peace on earth’ which, in announcing the advent of the Saviour, the angels proclaimed, with ‘good will to men,’ I hope that the Convention will not adjourn without adopting a resolution asking of the nations their united effective protection to this great agent of civilisation. The mode and terms of such resolution may be safely left to the intelligent members of the honourable and distinguished Convention.” The reading of this letter in the Convention was hailed with prolonged cheers for the writer of it, and the letter was ordered to be printed among the records of the Convention.

The death of his brother Sidney, a few days later, affected him very much, and it then became evident that his own life was ebbing away. While in this state he was asked to unveil a bronze statue of Franklin, which Captain Albert de Groot had presented to the printers of New York, and which was erected in front of the City Hall. Though confined to bed when asked to unveil this statue, the Professor said he would do it if he had to be lifted to the spot; and when he was introduced to the vast concourse of people present at the ceremony as “the distinguished inventor and pride of our country,” he stated that no one had more reason to venerate the name of Franklin than himself, and expressed a hope that Franklin’s illustrious example of devotion to the interest of universal humanity might be the seed of further fruit for the good of the world. Mr. Horace Greeley said that Professor Morse seemed to have been raised up by Providence to be the continuer of the great work of which Franklin was the beginner.

His exposure to the keen breeze blowing when he unveiled the Franklin statue aggravated the neuralgia in his head, from which he suffered intense pain. He gradually sank, and distracting pain was followed by stupor. The Rev. Dr. Adams, of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New York, of which the Professor was a member, attended him in his illness, and afterwards gave the following account of his last days:—“A short time ago he was occupied with other fellow-citizens in acts of attention to a distinguished representative of the Royal House of Russia. At the Holy Communion of this church next ensuing, an occasion in which for domestic and personal reasons he felt an extraordinary interest, at the close of the service he approached me with more than usual warmth and pressure of the hand, and, with a beaming countenance, said: ‘Oh, this is something better and greater than standing before princes.’ His piety had the simplicity of childhood. When his brother Sidney died last Christmas, he began to die also. Through fear of exciting alarm and giving distress to his own household, he did not speak so much to them as to some others, of his expected departure, but he used to say familiarly to some with whom he was ready to converse upon this subject, ‘I love to be studying the Guide Book of the country to which I am going; I wish to know more and more about it.’ A few days before his decease, in the privacy of his chamber I spoke to him of the great goodness of God to him in his remarkable life. ‘Yes; so good, so good,’ was the quick response; ‘and the best part of all is yet to come.’ Though spared more than eighty years, he saw none of the infirmities of age, either of mind or body. His delicate taste, his love for the beautiful, his fondness for the fine arts, his sound judgment, his intellectual activities, his public spirit, his intense interest in all that concerned the welfare and the decoration of the city, his earnest advocacy of Christian liberty throughout the world—all continued unimpaired to the last. With perfect health and the full possession of every faculty, urbane and courteous to all who knew him, there was no infelicity of temper or manner such as sometimes befalls extreme age. Surrounded by a young family, he was their genial friend and companion as well as head, sympathising in all the simple and innocent pleasures that give the charms to home. In particular qualities he had many equals and superiors, but in that rare combination of qualities which, like the harmony of colours in the finished picture, made him what he was, he seems to have been unrivalled.”—On the 2nd of April, 1872,

“He passed from sunshine to the sunless land.”

His remains were interred in Greenwood Cemetery three days after his death. The funeral service was held in Madison Square Presbyterian Church, and the funeral was attended by representatives of the leading telegraph companies in New York, of the Academy of Design, of the Evangelical Alliance, the Chamber of Commerce, the Association for the Advancement of Science and Art, and other public bodies. In the House of Representatives a concurrent resolution was passed recording profound regret at the death of “Professor Morse, whose distinguished and varied abilities have contributed more than those of any other person to the development and progress of the practical arts,” and declaring that his purity of life, his loftiness of scientific aim, and his resolute faith in truth, rendered it highly proper that the Representatives and Senators should solemnly testify to his worth and greatness. Mr. Wood, of New York city, being the only member then in the House who voted in 1843 for the bill for the experimental telegraph line, gave a sketch of the measure which enabled Professor Morse to bring his invention to a practical test. Other admirers paid their tributes of respect in verses, such as the following:—

“Men of every faith and nation

Honor, love, revere, admire

One who sought not adulation

When he chained the electric fire;

“Who, discouraged and defeated,

Bore it with a patient grace;

By no boastful pride elated,

When he conquered time and space.”