Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals / In Two Volumes, Volume II

by Samuel Finley Breese Morse

It was not yet in a shape to prove to a skeptical world its practical utility; much had still to be done to bring it to perfection; new discoveries had still to be made by Morse and by others which were essential to its success; the skill, the means, and the faith of others had to be enlisted in its behalf, but the actual invention was there and Morse was the inventor.

How simple it all seems to us now, and yet its very simplicity is its sublimest feature, for it was this which compelled the admiration of scientists and practical men of affairs alike, and which gradually forced into desuetude all other systems of telegraphy until to-day the Morse telegraph still stands unrivalled.

That many other minds had been occupied with the same problem was a fact unknown to the inventor at the time, although a few years later he was rudely awakened. A fugitive note, written many years later, in his handwriting, although speaking of himself in the third person, bears witness to this. It is entitled "Good thought":—

"A circumstance which tends to confuse, in fairly ascertaining priority of invention, is that a subsequent state of knowledge is confounded in the general mind with the state of knowledge when the invention is first announced as successful. This is certainly very unfair. When Morse announced his invention, what was the general state of knowledge in regard to the telegraph? It should be borne in mind that a knowledge of the futile attempts at electric telegraphs previous to his successful one has been brought out from the lumber garret of science by the research of eighteen years. Nothing was known of such telegraphs to many scientific men of the highest attainments in the centres of civilization. Professor Morse says himself (and certainly he has not given in any single instance a statement which has been falsified) that, at the time he devised his system, he supposed himself to be the first person that ever put the words 'electric telegraph' together. He supposed himself at the time the originator of the phrase as well as the thing. But, aside from his positive assertion, the truth of this statement is not only possible but very probable. The comparatively few (very few as compared with the mass who now are learned in the facts) who were in the habit of reading the scientific journals may have read of the thought of an electric telegraph about the year 1832, and even of Ronald's, and Betancourt's, and Salva's, and Lomond's impracticable schemes previously, and have forgotten them again, with thousands of other dreams, as the ingenious ideas of visionary men; ideas so visionary as to be considered palpably impracticable, declared to be so, indeed, by Barlow, a scientific man of high standing and character; yet the mass of the scientific as well as the general public were ignorant even of the attempts that had been made. The fact of any of them having been published in some magazine at the time, whose circulation may be two or three thousand, and which was soon virtually lost amid the shelves of immense libraries, does not militate against the assertion that the world was ignorant of the fact. We can show conclusively the existence of this ignorance respecting telegraphs at the time of the invention of Morse's telegraph."

The rest of this note (evidently written for publication) is missing, but enough remains to prove the point.

Thus we have seen that the idea of his telegraph came to Morse as a sudden inspiration and that he was quite ignorant of the fact that others had thought of using electricity to convey intelligence to a distance. Mr. Prime in his biography says: "Of all the great inventions that have made their authors immortal and conferred enduring benefit upon mankind, no one was so completely grasped at its inception as this."

One of his fellow passengers, J. Francis Fisher, Esq., counsellor-at-law of Philadelphia, gave the following testimony at Morse's request:—

"In the fall of the year 1832 I returned from Europe as a passenger with Mr. Morse in the ship Sully, Captain Pell master. During the voyage the subject of an electric telegraph was one of frequent conversation. Mr. Morse was most constant in pursuing it, and alone the one who seemed disposed to reduce it to a practical test, and I recollect that, for this purpose, he devised a system of signs for letters to be indicated and marked by a quick succession of strokes or shocks of the galvanic current, and I am sure of the fact that it was deemed by Mr. Morse perfectly competent to effect the result stated. I did not suppose that any other person on board the ship claimed any merit in the invention, or was, in fact, interested to pursue it to maturity as Mr. Morse then seemed to be, nor have I been able since that time to recall any fact or circumstance to justify the claim of any person other than Mr. Morse to the invention."

This clear statement of Mr. Fisher's was cheerfully given in answer to a request for his recollections of the circumstances, in order to combat the claim of Dr. Charles T. Jackson that he had given Morse all the ideas of the telegraph, and that he should be considered at least its joint inventor. This was the first of the many claims which the inventor was forced to meet. It resulted in a lawsuit which settled conclusively that Morse was the sole inventor, and that Jackson was the victim of a mania which impelled him to claim the discoveries and achievements of others as his own. I shall have occasion to refer to this matter again.

It is to be noted that Mr. Fisher refers to "signs for letters." Whether Morse actually had devised or spoken of a conventional alphabet at that time cannot be proved conclusively, but that it must have been in his mind the "Cuvier" referred to before indicates.