[Illustration: "ATTENTION THE UNNIVERSE! BY KINGDOMS RIGHT WHEEL!"
Facsimile of the First Morse Alphabet Message, now In the National
Museum, Washington]
It will be noticed that the signs for the letters are those, not of the first form of the alphabet as embodied in the drawing attached to the caveat, but of the finally adopted code. This has led some historians, notably Mr. Franklin Leonard Pope, to infer that some mistake has been made in giving out this as a facsimile of this early message; that the letters should have been those of the earlier alphabet. I think, however, that this is but an added proof that Morse devised the first form of the code long before he met Vail, and that the changes to the final form, a description of which I have given, were made by Morse in 1837, or early in 1838, as soon as he became convinced of the superiority of the alphabetic mode, in plenty of time to have been used in this exhibition.
The month of January, 1838, was a busy one at Morristown, for Morse and Vail were bending all their energies toward the perfecting and completion of the instruments, so that a demonstration of the telegraph could be given in Washington at as early a date as possible. Morse refers feelingly to the trials and anxieties of an inventor in a letter to a friend, dated January 22, 1838:—
"I have just returned from nearly six weeks' absence at Morristown, New Jersey, where I have been engaged in the superintendence of the making of my Telegraph for Washington.
"Be thankful, C——, that you are not an inventor. Invention may seem an easy way to fame, or, what is the same thing to many, notoriety, different as are in reality the two objects. But it is far otherwise. I, indeed, desire the first, for true fame implies well-deserving, but I have no wish for the latter, which yet seems inseparable from it.
"The condition of an inventor is, indeed, not enviable. I know of but one condition that renders it in any degree tolerable, and that is the reflection that his fellow-men may be benefited by his discoveries. In the outset, if he has really made a discovery, which very word implies that it was before unknown to the world, he encounters the incredulity, the opposition, and even the sneers of many, who look upon him with a kind of pity, as a little beside himself if not quite mad. And, while maturing his invention, he has the comfort of reflection, in all the various discouragements he meets with from petty failures, that, should he by any means fail in the grand result, he subjects himself rather to the ridicule than the sympathy of his acquaintances, who will not be slow in attributing his failure to a want of that common sense in which, by implication, they so much abound, and which preserves them from the consequences of any such delusions.
"But you will, perhaps, think that there is an offset in the honors and emoluments that await the successful inventor, one who has really demonstrated that he has made an important discovery. This is not so. Trials of another kind are ready for him after the appropriate difficulties of his task are over. Many stand ready to snatch the prize, or at least to claim a share, so soon as the success of an invention seems certain, and honor and profit alone remain to be obtained.
"This long prelude, C——, brings me at the same time to the point of my argument and to my excuse for my long silence. My argument goes to prove that, unless there is a benevolent consideration in our discoveries, one which enables us to rejoice that others are benefited even though we should suffer loss, our happiness from any honor awarded to a successful invention is exposed to constant danger from the designs of the unprincipled. My excuse is that, ever since the receipt of your most welcome letter, I have been engaged in preparing to repel a threatened invasion of my rights to the invention of the Telegraph by a fellow-passenger from France, one from whom I least expected any such insidious design. The attempt startled me and put me on my guard, and set me to the preparation for any attack. I have been compelled for some weeks to use my pen only for this purpose, and have written much in the hope of preventing the public exposure of my antagonist; but I fear my labor will be vain on this point, from what I hear and the tone in which he writes. I have no fear for myself, being now amply prepared with evidence to repel any attempt which may be made to sustain any claim he may prefer to a share with me in the invention of the Telegraph."
I have already shown that this claim of Dr. Jackson's was proved to be but the hallucination of a disordered brain, and it will not be necessary to go into the details of the controversy.
These were anxious and nerve-racking days for both Morse and Vail, and it is small wonder that there should have been some slight friction. Vail in his private correspondence makes some mention of this. For instance, in a letter to his brother George, of January 22, 1838, he says:—