Electricity and Magnetism

by Elisha Gray

I shall always remember Henry as a most unassuming, kindly, genial man, and I shall never forget his kindness to me. In 1874 I began my researches in telephony, having applied for a patent for an apparatus for transmitting musical tones telegraphically. This consisted of a means of transmitting musical tones through a wire and reproducing them on a metal plate (stretched on the body of a violin to give it resonance) by rubbing the plate with the hand—the latter being a part of the circuit. The examiner refused the application at first on the ground that the inventor or operator could not be a part of his machine. I took my apparatus and went to Washington, first calling upon Professor Henry, never having met him before. He received me most kindly, and allowed me to string wires from room to room in the institute, and when he had witnessed the experiments he seemed as delighted as a child. I now brought the patent office official over to the Smithsonian and soon convinced him that the inventor could be a part of his own machine.

The same year I went abroad, and Henry gave me a letter to Tyndall. It was very fortunate for me that he did, for Tyndall was very shy at first, and it was only Henry's letter that gave me a hearing for a moment. The history of the few days that followed this first interview with Tyndall at the Royal Institution would make very interesting reading, if I felt at liberty to publish it. Suffice it to say that he was convinced in a few minutes after he had reached the experimental stage that not all my work had been anticipated by Wheatstone, as he asserted before seeing the experiments. Wheatstone had transmitted the tones of a piano, mechanically, from one room to another by a wooden rod placed upon the sound-board and terminating in another room in contact with another sound-board. But this was very different from transmitting musical tones and melodies from one city to another through a wire, as I could do with my electrotelephonic apparatus.

It is a curious fact that the world is divided into two great classes, leaders and followers. Or we might say, originators and copyists; the former division being very small, while the latter is very large. As late as 1820 the European philosophers were trying to construct a telegraphic system based upon two ideas, announced a long time before, to wit, the use of static or frictional electricity, and a wire for every letter. It does not seem to have occurred to any one to devise a code consisting of motions differently related as to time, and to use simply one wire.

In 1819 Oersted discovered the effect of a galvanic current on a magnetic needle, and published a pamphlet concerning his discovery. This stimulated others, and Ampère applied it to the galvanometer the same year. Arago applied it to soft iron, and here was the germ of the electromagnet. We see that as far back as 1820 we had the galvanic battery and the electromagnet, the two great essentials of the modern telegraph.

However, there remained another great discovery to be made before these elements could be utilized for telegraphic purposes. One cell of battery was used, and the magnet was made by winding one layer of wire spirally around the iron, so that each spiral was out of touch with its neighbor. Barlow of England, a Fellow of the Royal Society, tried the effect of a current through a wire 200 feet long, and found that the power was so diminished that he was discouraged, and in a paper gave it as his opinion that galvanism was of no use for telegraphing at a distance. This paper stimulated others, and it was reserved for our own Joseph Henry, already referred to, to show not only how to construct a magnet for long-distance telegraphy, but also how to adapt the battery to the distance. He showed us that by insulating the wire and using several layers of whirls, instead of one, and by using enough cells of battery coupled up in series to get more voltage, as we now express it, it was possible to transmit signals to a distance. He not only set forth the theory, but he constructed a line of bell-wire 1060 feet long and worked his magnet by making the armature strike a bell for the signals, which is the basis of the modern "sounder."

Nothing was needed but to construct a line and devise a code to be read by sound, to have practically our modern Morse telegraph. This line was constructed in 1831. In 1835 Henry, who was then at Princeton, constructed a line and worked it as it is to-day worked, with a relay and local circuit, so that at that period all the problems had been worked out. But, like the speaking-telephone in its early inception, no one appreciated its real importance. Henry himself did not think it worth while to take out a patent. Two years later the Secretary of the Treasury sent out a circular letter of inquiry to know if some system of telegraphic communication could not be devised. The learned heads of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, the oldest scientific society in America, advised that a semaphore system be established between New York and Washington, consisting of forty towers with swinging arms, the same as used in the days of Wellington. Among other replies to the circular letter of the secretary was one from Samuel F. B. Morse. Morse was not a scientist or even an inventor, at least not at that time. He was an artist of some note. In 1832, while crossing the ocean, Morse, in connection with one Dr. Jackson of Boston, devised a code of telegraphic signs intended to be used in a chemical telegraph system.

Some years later Morse adapted Henry's signal-instrument to a recorder, called the Morse register, and this was the instrument used in the early days of the Morse telegraph.

What Morse seems to have really invented was the register, which made embossed marks on a strip of paper, and the code of dots and dashes representing letters, now known as the Morse alphabet, although this latter is questioned. Morse took his apparatus to Washington and exhibited it to the members of Congress in the year 1838, but it was four years before a bill was passed that enabled him to try the experiment between Baltimore and Washington. We will let him describe in his own words the closing day of Congress. He says:

"My bill had indeed passed the House of Representatives and it was on the calendar of the Senate, but the evening of the last day had commenced with more than 100 bills to be considered and passed upon before mine could be reached. Wearied out with the anxiety of suspense, I consulted one of my senatorial friends. He thought the chance of reaching it to be so small that he advised me to consider it as lost. In a state of mind which I must leave you to imagine, I returned to my lodgings to make preparations for returning home the next day. My funds were reduced to the fraction of a dollar. In the morning, as I was about to sit down to breakfast, the servant announced that a young lady desired to see me in the parlor. It was the daughter of my excellent friend and college classmate, the commissioner of patents, Henry L. Ellsworth. She had called, she said, by her father's permission, and in the exuberance of her own joy, to announce to me the passage of my telegraph bill at midnight, but a moment before the Senate adjourned. This was the turning-point of the telegraph invention in America. As an appropriate acknowledgment of the young lady's sympathy and kindness—a sympathy which only a woman can feel and express—I promised that the first dispatch by the first line of telegraph from Washington to Baltimore should be indited by her; to which she replied: 'Remember, now, I shall hold you to your word.' About a year from that time the line was completed, and, everything being prepared, I apprised my young friend of the fact. A note from her inclosed this dispatch: 'What hath God wrought?' These were the first words that passed on the first completed line in America."

The first telegraph-line in America was put into operation in the spring of 1844 at the beginning of Polk's administration. I remember as a boy having the two cities, Baltimore and Washington, pointed out to me on the map, and how the story of the telegraph impressed me. Congress appropriated $30,000 for the construction of the line, and $8000 to keep it running the first year. It was placed under the control of the postmaster-general, and the line was thrown open to the public. The tariff was fixed at one cent for every four words. It was open for business on April 1, 1844, and for the first few days the revenue was exceedingly small. On the morning of the first day a gentleman came in and wanted to "see it work." The operator told him that he would be glad to show it at the regular tariff of one cent for four words. The gentleman grew angry and said that he was influential with the administration, and that if he did not show him the working free of charge he would see to it that he lost his job. His bluff did not succeed. The operator referred him to the postmaster-general, and thus the stormy interview ended. No patrons came in for the next three days, but a great number stood around hoping to see the instrument start up, but no one was willing to invest a cent—probably from fear of being laughed at.