Birth and education—Diverted from electricity to art—Labours as an artist in England and America Pages [231-241]
CHAPTER II.
Travels to study art—First conception of Recording Telegraph—Experiments with it in New York—Invention of Relay—His poverty and disappointments—His originality disputed—First exhibitions of his apparatus—Descriptions of it—Foreign patents—Introduction of photography—Congress asked to try his telegraph—Appropriation granted—Experimental line made and opened Pages [242-278]
CHAPTER III.
Morse Telegraph offered to Government and declined—Rapid extension of it by Companies—Determination of longitude; Morse transmitter and sounder—First Atlantic Cable Pages [279-301]
CHAPTER IV.
Rewards of inventors—Morse patents vindicated—Rival inventions—Pioneers of practical telegraphy—Honours and emoluments of Morse—Statue in New York—Last days—Death Pages [302-322]
INTRODUCTION.
Although this work is the first of its kind relating to electricians, its design is neither novel nor tentative. Its object is not only to give a popular account of the most memorable achievements of those men who have succeeded in evolving the laws of electricity, but to convey to unscientific readers some knowledge of the nature of those laws, and the means by which they have been applied to the purposes of man.
In some senses electrical science and its practical applications might be described as the creation of the present century; and the author has been encouraged to adopt this method of giving a popular account of the great and useful work that our electricians have done by the success of a similar work dealing, in like manner, with the men and the inventions that have multiplied and cheapened the production and use of the most useful of metals.[1] An eminent reviewer of that work justly observed that “our inventors might well boast that with a piece of steel and the recent developments of the magnetic force—so far at least as manufactures and commerce are concerned—they have revolutionised the world.” It is this revolution and the men who have effected it, that this work proposes to give an account of, hoping to realise the truth of Tacitus’ observation, that “the age which is most fertile in bright examples is the best qualified to make a fair estimate of them.”