As a specimen of the vigorous style in which he repelled attacks on his merits as an inventor, I shall give the following:—
Messrs. Editors,—The London "Mechanics' Magazine," for October, 1844, copies an article from the Baltimore "American" in which my discovery in relation to causing electricity to cross rivers without wires is announced, and then in a note to his readers the editor of the magazine makes the following assertion: "The English reader need scarcely be informed that Mr. Morse has in this, as in other matters relating to magneto telegraphs, only _re_discovered what was previously well known in this country."
More illiberality and deliberate injustice has been seldom condensed within so small a compass. From the experience, however, that I, in common with many American scientific gentlemen, have already had of the piratical conjoined with the abusive propensity of a certain class of English savans and writers, I can scarcely expect either liberality or justice from the quarter whence this falsehood has issued. But there is, fortunately, an appeal to my own countrymen, to the impartial and liberal-minded of Continental Europe, and the truly noble of England herself.
I claim to be the original inventor of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph; to be the first who planned and operated a really practicable Electric Telegraph. This is the broad claim I make in behalf of my country and myself before the world. If I cannot substantiate this claim, if any other, to whatever country he belongs, can make out a previous or better claim, I will cheerfully yield him the palm.
Although I had planned and completed my Telegraph unconscious, until after my Telegraph was in operation, that even the words "Electric Telegraph" had ever been combined until I had combined them, I have now made myself familiar with, I believe, all the plans, abortive and otherwise, which have been given to the world since the time of Franklin, who was the first to suggest the possibility of using electricity as a means of transmitting intelligence. With this knowledge, both of the various plans devised and the time when they were severally devised, I claim to be the first inventor of a really practicable telegraph on the electric principle. When this shall be seriously called in question by any responsible name, I have the proof in readiness.
As to English electric telegraphs, the telegraph of Wheatstone and Cooke, called the Magnetic Needle Telegraph, inefficient as it is, was invented five years after mine, and the printing telegraph, so-called (the title to the invention of which is litigated by Wheatstone and Bain) was invented seven years after mine.
So much for my _re_discovering what was previously known in England.
As to the discovery that electricity may be made to cross the water without wire conductors, above, through, or beneath the water, the very reference by the editor to another number of the magazine, and to the experiments of Cooke, or rather Steinheil, and of Bain, shows that the editor is wholly ignorant of the nature of my experiment. I have in detail the experiments of Bain and Wheatstone. They were merely in effect repetitions of the experiments of Steinheil. Their object was to show that the earth or water can be made one half of the circuit in conducting electricity, a fact proved by Franklin with ordinary electricity in the last century, and by Professor Steinheil, of Munich, with magnetic electricity in 1837. Mr. Bain, and after him Mr. Wheatstone, in England repeated, or (to use the English editor's phrase) rediscovered the same fact in 1841. But what have these experiments, in which one wire is carried across the river, to do with mine which dispenses with wires altogether across the river? I challenge the proof that such an experiment has ever been tried in Europe, unless it be since the publication of my results.
The year 1844 was drawing to a close and Congress still was dilatory. Morse hated to abandon his cherished dream of government ownership, and, while carrying on negotiations with private parties in order to protect himself, he still hoped that Congress would at last see the light. He writes to his brother from Washington on December 30:—
"Telegraph matters look exceedingly encouraging, not only for the United States but for Europe. I have just got a letter from a special agent of the French Government, sent to Boston by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in which he says that he has seen mine and 'is convinced of its superiority,' and wishes all information concerning it, adding: 'I consider it my duty to make a special report on your admirable invention.'"