Historic Inventions

by Rupert Sargent Holland

On the packet ship Sully, sailing from the French port of Havre for New York on October 1, 1832, were Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, who had been attending certain lectures on electricity in Paris, and an American artist named Samuel Finley Breese Morse. Dr. Jackson was intensely interested in electricity, and more especially in some experiments that Faraday had lately been making in regard to it. He had an electromagnet in his trunk, and one day, as a number of the passengers sat at dinner, he began to describe the laws of electro-magnetism as they were then known. He told how the force of a magnet could be tremendously increased by passing an electric current a number of times about a bar of soft iron. One of the diners asked how far electricity could be transmitted and how fast it traveled. Dr. Jackson answered that it seemed to travel instantaneously, none of the experimenters having detected any appreciable difference in time between the completing of the electric circuit and the appearance of the spark at any distance. Morse, who had been interested in the study of electricity at Yale College, said that if the electric current could be made visible in any part of the circuit he saw no reason why messages could not be sent instantaneously by electricity. To send a message would simply require the breaking of the circuit in such different ways as could be made to represent the letters of the alphabet. The conversation went on to other subjects, but the artist kept the conclusion he had just stated in mind. That night he walked the deck discussing the matter with Dr. Jackson, and for the rest of the voyage he was busy jotting down suggestions in his note-book and elaborating a plan for transforming breaks in an electric current into letters.

The facts at his disposal, and his first method of dealing with them, were comparatively simple. The electric current would travel to any distance along a wire. The current being broken, a spark would appear. The spark would stand for one letter. The lack of a spark might stand for another. The length of its absence would indicate another. With these three indications as a starting-point he could build up an alphabet. As there was no limit to the distance that electricity would travel there seemed no reason why these dots and dashes, or sparks and spaces, should not be sent all around the world.

Professor Jeremiah Day had taught Morse at Yale that the electric spark might be made to pierce a band of unrolling paper. Harrison Gray Dyar, of New York, in 1827, had shown that the spark would decompose a chemical solution and so leave a stain as a mark, and it was known that it would excite an electro-magnet, which would move a piece of soft iron, and that if a pencil were attached to this a mark would be made on paper. Therefore Morse knew that if he devised his alphabet he had only to choose the best method of indicating the dots and dashes by the current. The voyage from Havre to New York occupied six weeks, and during the greater part of this time he was busy working out a mechanical sender which would serve to break the electric current by a series of types set on a stick which should travel at an even rate of speed. The teeth of the type would complete the circuit or would break the current as they passed, and so send the letters. At the receiving end of the line the current as it was sent would excite the electro-magnet, which would be attached to a pencil, and so make a mark, and each mark would represent one of the symbols that were to stand for letters. He worked day and night over these first plans, and after a few days showed his notes to Mr. William C. Rives, a passenger, who had been the United States Minister to France. Mr. Rives made various criticisms, and Morse took these up in turn, and after long study overcame each one, so that by the end of the voyage he felt that he had worked out a practical method of making the electric current send and receive messages.

At a later date a contest arose as to the respective claims of Samuel Morse and Dr. Jackson to be considered the inventor of the recording telegraph, and the evidence of their fellow passengers on board the Sully was given in great detail. From all that was then said it would appear that Dr. Jackson knew quite as much, if not more, about the properties of electro-magnetism than Morse did, but that he was of a speculative turn of mind, whereas Morse was practical, and capable of reducing the other’s theories to a working basis. The note-books he submitted, and which were well remembered by many of his fellow voyagers, showed the various combinations of dots, lines, and spaces with which he was constructing an alphabet, and also the crude diagrams of the recording instrument which should mark the dots and lines on a rolling piece of paper. Captain Pell, in command of the Sully, testified later, that as the packet came into port Morse said to him, “Well, Captain, should you hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship Sully.” The times were ripe for his great invention, and although other men, abler scientists and students, had foreseen the possibilities of such a system, it was Morse who determined to put it into practice.

But Samuel Morse was a painter, and all his career thus far had lain along artistic lines. True, when he was an undergraduate at Yale he had been much interested in Professor Day’s lectures on electricity, and had written long letters home in regard to them. But when he was about to graduate, he wrote to his father, a well-known clergyman of Charlestown, Massachusetts, “I am now released from college, and am attending to painting. As to my choice of a profession, I still think I was made for a painter, and would be obliged to you to make such arrangements with Mr. Allston for my studying with him as you shall think expedient. I should desire to study with him during the winter; and, as he expects to return to England in the spring, I should admire to be able to go with him. But of this we will talk when we meet at home.”

Washington Allston was at that time the leading influence in the primitive art life of the country, and Morse was very fortunate to have won his friendship and interest. Allston took him to England, and there introduced him to Benjamin West, the dean of painters and a man who was always eager to aid young countrymen of his who planned to follow his career. Morse made a careful drawing of the Farnese Hercules and took it to West. The veteran examined it and handed it back, saying, “Now finish it.” Morse worked over it some time longer, and returned it to West. “Very well, indeed, sir,” said West. “Go on and finish it.” “Is it not finished?” asked Morse. “See,” said West, “you have not marked that muscle, nor the articulation of the finger-joints.” Again Morse worked over it, and again returned, only to meet with the same counsel to complete the picture. Then the older man relented. “Well, I have tried you long enough,” said he. “Now, sir, you have learned more by this drawing than you would have accomplished in double the time by a dozen half-finished beginnings. It is not many drawings, but the character of one which makes a thorough draughtsman. Finish one picture, sir, and you are a painter.”

Morse now decided to paint a large picture of “The Dying Hercules” for exhibition at the Royal Academy. In order to be sure of the anatomy he first modeled the figure in clay, and this cast was so well done that, acting on West’s advice, he entered it for a prize in sculpture then offered by the Society of Arts. This entry won, and the young American was presented with the gold medal of the society before a distinguished audience. The picture that he painted from this model was hung at the exhibition of the Royal Academy, and received high praise from the critics, so that Morse felt he had begun his career as artist most auspiciously.

His natural inclination was toward the painting of large canvases dealing with historical and mythical subjects, which were much in fashion at that period, and he now set to work on the subject, “The Judgment of Jupiter in the case of Apollo, Marpessa, and Idas.” This was to be submitted for the prize of fifty guineas and medal offered by the Royal Academy. It seems to have been a fine piece of work, and met with West’s hearty praise, but before it could be submitted the artist was obliged to return home at an urgent summons from his father.

Boston had already heard of Morse’s success in London when he reached home in October, 1815. His “Judgment of Jupiter” was exhibited, and became the talk of the town, but when he opened a studio and began to paint no one offered to buy any of his pictures. He needed money badly, and he saw none coming his way. After a year’s struggle he closed his studio, and traveled through the country sections of New England, looking for work as a portrait painter. This he found, and he wrote to his parents from Concord, New Hampshire, “I have painted five portraits at $15 each, and have two more engaged and many talked of. I think I shall get along well. I believe I could make an independent fortune in a few years if I devoted myself exclusively to portraits, so great is the desire for good portraits in the different country towns.”

In Concord he met Miss Lucretia P. Walker, whom he married a few years later. Meantime he went to visit his uncle in Charleston, South Carolina, and found his portraits so popular that he received one hundred and fifty orders in a few weeks. He was also commissioned to paint a portrait of James Monroe, then President, for the Charleston Common Council, and the picture was considered a striking masterpiece. He soon after married, and settled his household goods in New York, with $3,000 made by his portraits, as his capital.