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

by Samuel Finley Breese Morse

This letter, to the best of my knowledge, has never before been published, and yet it contains statements of the utmost interest. The discovery of duplex telegraphy, or the possibility of sending two or more messages over the same wire at the same time has been credited by various authorities to different persons; by some to Moses G. Farmer in 1852, by others to Gintl, of Vienna, in 1853, or to Frischen or Siemens and Halske in 1854. Yet we see from this letter that Morse and his assistant Dr. Fisher not only made the discovery ten years earlier, in 1842, but demonstrated its practicability to the scientists and others in Washington at that date. Why this fact should have been lost sight of I cannot tell, but I am glad to be able to bring forward the proof of the paternity of this brilliant discovery even at this late day.

Still another scientific principle was established by Morse at this early period, as we learn from this letter, and that is the possibility of wireless telegraphy; but, as he has been generally credited with the first suggestion of what has now become one of the greatest boons to humanity, it will not be necessary to enlarge on it.

A brighter day seemed at last to be dawning, and a most curious happening, just at this time, came to the inventor as an auspicious omen. In stringing his wires between the two committee rooms he had to descend into a vault beneath them which had been long unused. A workman, who was helping him, went ahead and carried a lamp, and, as he glanced around the chamber, Morse noticed something white on a shelf at one side. Curious to see what this could be, he went up to it, when what was his amazement to find that it was a plaster cast of that little statuette of the Dying Hercules which had won for him the Adelphi Gold Medal so many years before in London. There was the token of his first artistic success appearing to him out of the gloom as the harbinger of another success which he hoped would also soon emerge from behind the lowering clouds.

The apparently mysterious presence of the little demigod in such an out-of-the-way place was easily explained. Six casts of the clay model had been made before the original was broken up. One of these Morse had kept for himself, four had been given to various institutions, and one to his friend Charles Bulfinch, who succeeded Latrobe as the architect of the Capitol. A sinister fate seemed to pursue these little effigies, for his own, and the four he had presented to different institutions, were all destroyed in one way and another. After tracing each one of these five to its untimely end, he came to the conclusion that this evidence of his youthful genius had perished from the earth; but here, at last, the only remaining copy was providentially revealed to the eyes of its creator, having undoubtedly been placed in the vault for safe-keeping and overlooked. It was cheerfully returned to him. By him it was given to his friend, the Reverend E. Goodrich Smith, and by the latter presented to Yale University, where it now rests in the Fine Arts Building.

So ended the year 1842, a decade since the first conception of the telegraph on board the Sully, and it found the inventor making his last stand for recognition from that Government to which he had been so loyal, and upon which he wished to bestow a priceless gift. With the dawn of the new year, a year destined to mark an epoch in the history of civilization, his flagging spirits were revived, and he entered with zest on what proved to be his final and successful struggle.

It passes belief that with so many ocular demonstrations of the practicability of the Morse telegraph, and with the reports of the success of other telegraphs abroad, the popular mind, as reflected in its representatives in Congress, should have remained so incredulous. Morse had been led to hope that his bill was going to pass by acclamation, but in this he was rudely disappointed. Still he had many warm friends who believed in him and his invention. First and foremost should be mentioned his classmate, Henry L. Ellsworth, the Commissioner of Patents, at whose hospitable home the inventor stayed during some of these anxious days, and who, with his family, cheered him with encouraging words and help. Among the members of Congress who were energetic in support of the bill especially worthy of mention are—Kennedy, of Maryland; Mason, of Ohio; Wallace, of Indiana; Ferris and Boardman, of New York; Holmes, of South Carolina; and Aycrigg, of New Jersey.

The alternating moods of hope and despair, through which the inventor passed during the next few weeks, are best pictured forth by himself in brief extracts from letters to his brother Sidney:—

"January 6, 1843. I sent you a copy of the Report on the Telegraph a day or two since. I was in hopes of having it called up to-day, but the House refused to go into Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, so it is deferred. The first time they go into Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union it will probably be called up and be decided upon.

"Everything looks favorable, but I do not suffer myself to be sanguine, for I do not know what may be doing secretly against it. I shall believe it passed when the signature of the President is affixed to it, and not before."

"January 16. I snatch the moments of waiting for company in the Committee Room of Commerce to write a few lines. Patience is a virtue much needed and much tried here. So far as opinion goes everything is favorable to my bill. I hear of no opposition, but should not be surprised if it met with some. The great difficulty is to get it up before the House; there are so many who must 'define their position,' as the term is, so many who must say something to 'Bunkum,' that a great deal of the people's time is wasted in mere idle, unprofitable speechifying. I hope something may be done this week that shall be decisive, so that I may know what to do…. This waiting at so much risk makes me question myself: am I in the path of duty? When I think that the little money I brought with me is nearly gone, that, if nothing should be done by Congress, I shall be in a destitute state; that perhaps I shall have again to be a burden to friends until I know to what to turn my hands, I feel low-spirited. I am only relieved by naked trust in God, and it is right that this should be so."