The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph / With the Reports of Congress, and a Description of All Telegraphs Known, Employing Electricity or Galvanism

by Alfred Vail

The same principle which justified and demanded the transference of the mail on many chief routes, from the horse-drawn coach on common highways to steam-impelled vehicles on land and water, is equally potent to warrant the calling of the electro magnetic telegraph—that last and most wondrous birth of this wonder-teeming age—in aid of the post office, in discharge of its great function of rapidly transmitting correspondence and intelligence. And the only question to be considered, in determining whether it ought to be so called in aid, is a question of fact—namely, whether said telegraph possesses, over the modes of transmission now in use by the department, any advantages of sufficient value to justify the expense of engraftment on the system.

Its first and most signal advantage consists in the truly electrical celerity with which it transmits intelligence and communications through the greatest distances. It supplies, with a perfection like magic, the first and most important and difficult desideratum in a post office establishment—especially in one which has to serve a country so vast as ours. That desideratum is despatch—rapidity of transmission. It is to secure this, that the government pays a hugely greater price for the carrying and delivery of the mails, than any other equal quantum of transportation costs in the world. Nature seemed to have fixed certain limits to the speed of transmission, which it seemed impossible to pass; and those limits appeared to be reached by the steam-engine. But they have been utterly transcended by the electro magnetic telegraph, which has literally demolished time and space for all purposes of correspondence between places connected by its wonder-working wires.

Another inestimably important advantage of Professor Morse’s telegraph consists in the fulness, precision, and variety of matter which it is capable of communicating. Its alphabet contains representatives of all the letters of our language, and of all the numerals of arithmetic; and they are capable of infinite combination and repetition under the magnetic impulse. Hence it is obvious that the capacity of the instrument is competent to the communication of a long discourse of the greatest variety of thought and expression. But, as the telegraph letters must necessarily be despatched along the wire, and marked down, one by one, at the station to which they are transmitted, it is obvious that a long discourse must occupy considerable time, although the letters follow each other in the most rapid succession.

This brings the attention of the committee to a very material point, namely: the quantum of matter, or amount of intelligence, which the instrument would be capable of transmitting in a given time. The ordinary average of transmission is about thirty letters per minute along each wire. Six wires can be erected at an expense of somewhat less than $500 per mile, which would make the telegraph competent to the transmission of one hundred and eighty letters per minute, on an average. The words of our language are estimated to average six letters to a word. A telegraphic line composed of six wires, would, consequently, be able to transmit per minute thirty words fully spelt. But it is wholly unnecessary that the words should be fully spelt by the instrument. By a well-contrived system of abbreviations, the number of letters to be transmitted, in order to communicate a given number of words, is greatly diminished; and, of course, the number of words transmissible in a given time is proportionably augmented. To such great perfection has this system of conventional abbreviations been carried, as to have enabled the telegraph, on one occasion, to transmit in thirty minutes, from Washington to Baltimore, congressional intelligence enough to fill a column of the Baltimore Patriot. This was done, too, with only one wire. Increase the number of wires to six, as proposed in the bill introduced by the Committee on Commerce, and it follows that the capacity of the instrument will be adequate to the transmission of six long newspaper columns of matter in half an hour. Then it is to be further noted, that the telegraph is capable of working throughout the whole twenty-four hours, without intermission—in darkness as well as in daylight—in stormy weather as well as in serene—which would enable it to communicate in a single day two hundred and eighty-eight long newspaper columns of matter. All these facts put together, evince that the capacity of the instrument, in reference not only to the celerity of its communications, but in reference also to the kind and quantity of matter it can communicate in a given time, is such as to recommend it as a most efficient medium both of private correspondence and public intelligence.

That it is capable of being, and will actually be, at no distant day, extensively employed as such a medium, it seems to the committee there can be but little room to doubt. Such a result seems, indeed, to be rendered altogether certain, when, in addition to the capacities of the instrument, we take into consideration its cheapness. For little more than $100,000, Baltimore can be connected with New York; and for a like sum, New York with Boston. There would then be an unbroken telegraphic line from Boston to Washington; passing through New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and the other considerable towns on the route. What a vast number of short commercial letters would such a line be able to attract to itself, and to despatch every day, far in advance of the ordinary transportation by mail. Nor would any danger of a detrimental divulgence of their affairs exist to deter merchants and men of business from resorting to the telegraph; because, in the first place, the simple expedient of a concerted cipher between distant correspondents would protect their communications with a shield of secrecy impenetrable even to the officers and managers of the telegraph. And in the next place, the very nature of their functions will require that these persons shall be men of great trustworthiness, and that they shall moreover be placed under the most stringent official obligations of secrecy in regard to the contents of private communications. Under such circumstances, men of business need no more apprehend danger of improper publicity from employing the telegraph, than from the necessity of having clerks in their counting-houses to pen and copy their correspondence.

If all these advantages should have the effect of attracting to the telegraph the amount of custom which to the committee seems probable, it is obvious that a very moderate tariff of charges would produce income enough to make it a gainful property—at least upon such a line as that from Boston to Washington. It is upon this ground the committee base the belief that it is destined soon to be established along that whole line, if not by government, certainly by private capital and enterprise; and then a state of things will immediately develop itself, which the people will never endure nor tolerate the government in permitting to exist. That state of things would be that the post office, in its transportation of all correspondence and news, would lag not hours, but days, behind the transmission of the same things through another medium; and that, a medium belonging to private individuals, and controlled by private views and interests.

The importance of prompt action in the matter on the part of the government is further apparent from the fact that the invention is a private patented property. It is a property to the production of which Professor Morse has devoted years of the highest order of labour—the labour of genius and science combined. Under the patronage and at the expense of the government, he has been enabled to give to the world, in the line between Baltimore and Washington, a visible and perfectly triumphant demonstration of the success and utility of his invention. But the pecuniary reward, to which he is so justly entitled, remains yet in abeyance. It depends upon his being successful in making contracts with the government, or others, for the use of his invention. And, of course, if government shall not speedily embrace the project, and enable him to realize a compensation for his discovery, he will be necessitated to look elsewhere for his indemnification and reward. And, should the arrangements into which he may find it necessary to enter with private individuals or associations, stipulate exclusive rights in their favour, it is manifest how greatly government and people would lie at their mercy. Having in their hands the monopoly of such a medium of intelligence on the important lines, they could make such use of their advantages over the government and the community as would at length enable them to exact their own terms as the price of the surrender of their exclusive right; for the truth cannot be too often repeated, or too deeply impressed in relation to the subject, that the people will never submit long to the mischiefs and discredit of the public post office transmission of correspondence and intelligence being outstripped by any private monopoly or establishment whatever. The loss of revenue will co-operate with the complaints and sufferings of the people to compel the government, in the long run, to do what were better done at once—namely, to establish the telegraph in connection with, and as a branch of, the post office, on such great lines of communication as the correspondence and commerce of the country may indicate.

An accident has occurred, during the present winter, in the administration of the post office, to which the committee beg leave to call the attention of the House, as illustrative of the principles and policy by which the Department avowedly feels itself bound, as the public organ for the transmission of correspondence and intelligence. It is well known that, from Boston to Covington, in Georgia, the great southern and New Orleans mail is transported wholly by steam-power, either on water or on rail roads. It is carried this whole distance in five days. From Covington to Mobile, it is carried in stages, with the exception of a short interval of rail road in approaching Montgomery, Alabama. At Mobile, the mail is again committed to steam-carriage, by sea, to New Orleans. Now, of so much importance was a single day’s anticipation of the mail deemed in all the great cities on the route, that a private express was established with that view, to be carried on horseback between Covington and Montgomery. All matter destined for the private express was addressed to the agents of the company at Covington and Montgomery, according as such matter should happen to come from the north or south. The express carrier at Covington, receiving his despatches from the northern mail on the arrival of the steam-cars, delivered them at Montgomery to the post office again in such time that they were sent from Montgomery to Mobile and New Orleans by mail one day in advance of the other letters, which reached Covington at the same time. The effect was, the anticipation of the northern mail by one day at Mobile and New Orleans; and the same operation, from Montgomery to Covington, resulted in one day’s anticipation of the Mobile and New Orleans mails at New York. What did the Post Office Department do, under this state of facts? The answer to this question is to be found on the records of the Department. The Postmaster General, after watching these anticipations for a short time, issued an order for their prevention by the establishment of a post office express between Covington and Montgomery, to run alongside the private express. In the same manner, if the government shall not soon establish the telegraph on public account on the great routes, it will find the mails anticipated in the hundred-fold greater degree by the establishment of private telegraphs, which it will have to meet, either by purchasing them out on exorbitant terms, or by erecting a rival public telegraph line by their side.

The facts and reasonings which have now been submitted, satisfy the committee that it is important that the government should lose no time in occupying, with a telegraph of its own, the ground between Baltimore and New York. The committee look to the probability that the line will afterwards he progressively extended northwardly, southwardly, and westwardly, on routes the business and correspondence on which shall justify and require telegraphic facilities of communication.

Apart from the post office power, the government undoubtedly possesses the authority to establish the telegraph for its own use in the transmission of official orders and communications. On this ground, as well as on that growing out of the post office power, the committee deem the constitutionality of the measure incontrovertible.