Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

“A man may turn whither he pleases, and undertake anything whatsoever, but he will always return to the path which nature has once prescribed for him.”—Goethe.

“It is well that the beaten ways of the world get trodden into mud: we are thus forced to seek new paths and pick out new lines of life.” Of this saying the life of Professor Morse affords a striking illustration, and we are now approaching the time when observation should be taken of the circumstances that led to his leaving the beaten track in which he had hitherto been endeavouring to attain distinction and fortune. In 1822 he took a residence near that of his old college friend, Professor Benjamin Silliman, whose lectures he had attended in 1808-10, and with whom he had since continued on very friendly terms. Being now neighbours, they were in the habit of communicating to each other the latest news in science and art. Professor Morse was often in the laboratory of Professor Silliman, and there witnessed the latest experiments in electrical science. Professor Silliman has stated that at that time he possessed Dr. Robert Hare’s “splendid galvanic calorimeter,” by means of which he exhibited many interesting and beautiful results. Another friend was Professor James F. Dana, with whom he was also on intimate terms. Professor Dana was accustomed to visit Morse’s room, and to give him accounts of his experiments in electricity, which at that time was his favourite theme. In the winter of 1826-7 Professor Morse attended a course of lectures on electro-magnetism given by Professor Dana in the New York University. In these lectures not only were the latest discoveries in science described, but experiments were performed with apparatus constructed for the purpose. Among other things Professor Dana stated that “a spiral placed round a piece of soft iron bent into the form of a horseshoe renders it strongly and powerfully magnetic when an electric charge is passing through it.” This experiment he illustrated; and when in after years the early knowledge of Professor Morse in reference to electricity was challenged, he was able to produce the apparatus then used and to describe the experiments of Professor Dana, who died in 1827.

But just as the interest in his old study was thus revived, he came within sight of the position he had long coveted. He was now a successful artist. In New York he had many eminent friends and wealthy patrons. Work was abundant, and prices were increasing. All that appeared to him necessary to his continued success was greater proficiency in his art. In order to gain this, he resolved to visit Italy—the land of painters; and on his announcing his intention to do so, a score of influential friends gave him commissions to paint pictures for them there. He accordingly left New York in November, 1829, and proceeded first to England, where he visited his old friend Leslie, now in the sunshine of prosperity, and several other men eminent in art and literature. He then went to Paris, and arrived in Rome in the latter part of February, 1830. After spending a year and a half in Italy, enjoying her art treasures, he returned to Paris, where he renewed his acquaintance with General Lafayette, and exerted himself on behalf of the poor Poles, whose sufferings were then attracting attention. But his chief work in Paris was a painting of the interior of the Louvre, wherein he copied the most remarkable paintings on the walls. In the autumn of 1832 he returned to America, and his voyage back was the turning point in his career, He sailed from Havre for New York on October 1, 1832; and it was during that voyage on board the Sully that he conceived the idea of a recording telegraph.

Among the passengers was Dr. Charles T. Jackson, who was previously a stranger to Morse, but who afterwards claimed some share in the credit of the invention—a claim which Professor Morse repeatedly and emphatically repudiated. In his account of its origin, Professor Morse said:—“I have a distinct recollection of the manner, the place, and the moment when the thought of making an electric wire the means of communicating intelligence first came into my mind and was uttered. It was at the table in the cabin, just after we had completed the usual repast at mid-day. Dr. Jackson was on one side of the table and I upon the other. We were conversing on the recent scientific discoveries in electro-magnetism and the experiments of Ampère with the electro-magnet. Dr. Jackson was describing the length of wire in the coil of a magnet, and the question was asked by one of the passengers whether the electricity was not retarded by the length of the wire. Dr. Jackson replied in the negative, stating that electricity passed simultaneously over any known length of wire, and alluded to the experiment by which Franklin made many miles in circuit to ascertain the velocity of electricity, but could observe no difference of time between the touch at one extremity and the spark at the other. I then remarked that this being so, if the presence of electricity could be made visible in any desired part of the circuit, I saw no reason why intelligence might not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity. Dr. Jackson gave his assent that it was possible. The conversation was not diverted by a remark of mine from the details of the experiments Dr. Jackson was describing for the purpose of obtaining a spark from a magnet, nor was this thought of the telegraph again mentioned till I introduced the subject the next day. While Dr. Jackson’s mind was during the voyage more occupied with other branches of science, of geology, and anatomy, the thought which I had conceived took firm possession of my mind, and occupied the wakeful hours of the night; for I used to report to Dr. Jackson and the other passengers my progress, and to ask questions in regard to the best mode of ascertaining the presence of electricity. I had devised a system of signs and constructed a species of type (which I drew out in my sketch-book) by which to regulate the passage of electricity; but I had not settled the best mode of causing the electricity to mark. Several methods suggested themselves to me, such as causing a puncture to be made in paper by the passage of a spark between two disconnected parts, which I soon discarded as impracticable. I asked Dr. Jackson if there was not some mode of decomposition which could be turned to account. Dr. Jackson suggested an experiment which we agreed should be tried together as soon as possible after landing, but which we never made.” He preserved the pocket-book containing his first crude plan of an alphabet of signs, which became the basis of the Morse alphabet. So absorbed did he become in his designs of the various parts of the scheme that sleep forsook him, and it was after a few days brooding over it that he exhibited and explained his designs to his companions. As the voyage came to a close he said to the Captain: “Well, if you hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship Sully”—a remark which Captain Pell never forgot.

On landing at New York in November, 1832, after a voyage which lasted six weeks, he was met by his two brothers, Richard and Sidney. On the way to the house of Richard C. Morse, who was editor of the New York Observer, he told both his brothers that during the voyage he had conceived an important invention, which, he declared, would astonish the world, and of the success of which he was perfectly sanguine. He told them that he had invented a means of communicating intelligence by electricity, whereby a message could be written down in a permanent manner at a distance from the sender. He also took from his pocket the sketch-book in which he had drawn the kind of characters he intended to make his recording apparatus mark on paper, and he likewise showed them drawings of portions of his electro-magnetic machinery. His brothers were so impressed with his earnestness of purpose that they allowed him the use of an upper room in a house in New York, where he worked, and cooked, and slept. He has stated himself that scarcely a day had passed after his return before he commenced the construction of his invention from the plans and drawings made on board the ship. At that time he thought it necessary to embody the signs to be recorded or printed in a kind of type, which were to regulate the requisite opening and closing of the circuit in order to mark or imprint the points or signs upon a strip of paper at the desired intervals of time. Hence a mould of brass was made and a quantity of type cast before the close of the year 1832. The rest of the machinery, except a single cup battery, a few yards of wire, and a train of wheels of a wooden clock, which he adapted to the service of unrolling the strip of paper, “I was compelled,” he says, “from the necessities of my profession, to leave in the condition of drawings till I found a more permanent resting place. From November, 1832, till the summer of 1835, I had to change my residence three times, and was wholly without the pecuniary means for putting together and embodying the various parts of my invention in one whole.” In 1835 his prospects became more auspicious. He was appointed professor of the literature of the Arts of Design in New York University, and thus obtained a more commodious and more permanent residence. He says that when he took possession of his new home in the new building of New York City University in July, 1835, he lost not a day in collecting the parts of his apparatus and putting into practical form the first rude instrument intended to demonstrate the working of his invention. “I was favoured with a little leisure from the unfinished condition of the university building, which impeded the access of visitors to my apartments for my usual professional duties. With the aid of a single cup battery, I ascertained as early as 1834, previous to my removal to the university, that no visible effect was produced upon numerous salts which I submitted to trial by putting them in simple contact with the wire charged with electricity. I succeeded, however, in 1836 in marking by chemical decomposition when the electricity was passed through the moistened paper or cloth, but the process was attended with so many inconveniences that it was laid aside for the moment, not abandoned, that I might give my attention more directly to an electro-magnetic mode of recording.” In accounting for the slowness in completing his instrument and the rudeness of the one first constructed, he says: “The electro-magnet was not an instrument found for sale in the shops, as it is to-day; insulated wire was nowhere to be obtained except in small quantities, as bonnet wire of iron bound round with cotton thread. Copper wire, which was not in use for that purpose, was sold in the shops by the pound or yard at high prices and also in very limited quantities. To form my electro-magnet, I was under the necessity of procuring from the blacksmith a small rod of iron bent in a horseshoe form; of purchasing a few yards of copper wire, and of winding upon it by hand its cotton thread insulation before I could construct the rude helices of a magnet. I had already purchased a cheap wooden clock, and adapted the train of wheels to the rate of movement required for the ribbon of paper.... At the time of the construction of my first instrument I had not conceived the idea of the present key manipulator dependent on the skill of the operator, but I presumed that the accuracy of imprinting signs could only be secured by mechanical arrangements and by automatic process. Hence the first conception on board the ship of embodying the signs in type mathematically divided into points and spaces. Hence also the construction of the type mould, and the casting of the first type in 1832.” With the imperfect apparatus thus brought together, he was able to satisfy himself that the paper ribbon could be moved at a regular speed, while the requisite motion of a lever that moved a pencil made a succession of marks on the paper.

Yet though he was confident that his invention had in it the elements of success, he wanted to do with it what Benjamin West repeatedly told him to do with his picture of Hercules—“finish it”—before exhibiting it. He was conscious that it was in too rude a form to be seen by the public; and he has himself recorded that his means were too limited to admit of his constructing such a finished instrument as would insure success if he ventured to invite public attention to it. He was still painting for his living; and in order to economise both his means and his time he continued to work, eat, and sleep in the same room. He purchased his provisions in small quantities, and in order to conceal his poverty he generally went for his food in the evening as well as cooked it for himself. During the year 1837 his prospects began to brighten. In the early part of that year he succeeded in solving the problem of working his apparatus at a greater distance than he expected a single current to be effective. He says that “between 1835, when the first instrument was completed, and 1837 I had devised a means of providing against a foreshadowed exigency when the conductors were extended, not to a few hundred feet in length in a room, but to stations many miles distant. I was not ignorant of the possibility that the electro-magnet might be so enfeebled, when charged from a great distance, as to be inoperative for direct printing. This possibility was a subject of much thought and anxiety long previous to the year 1836. I had before then conceived and drawn a plan for obviating it; but the plan was so simple that it scarcely needed a drawing to illustrate it; a few words sufficed to make it comprehended. If the magnet, say at twenty miles distant, became so enfeebled as to be unable to print directly, it yet might have power sufficient to close and open another circuit of twenty miles further, and so on till it reached the required station. This plan was often spoken of to my friends previous to the year 1836, but early in January, 1836, after showing the original instrument in operation to my friend and colleague, Professor Gale, I imparted to him this plan of a relay battery and magnet to resolve his doubts regarding the practicability of my producing magnetic power sufficient to write at a distance.” In like manner Professor Gale says: “From April to September, 1837, Professor Morse and myself were engaged together in the work of preparing magnets, winding wire, constructing batteries, &c., in the university for an experiment on a larger but still very limited scale in the little leisure which we each had to spare. We were both at that time much cramped for funds. The labours of Professor Morse at this period were mostly directed to modifications of his instrument for marking, contriving the best modes of marking, varying the pencil or pen, using plumbago and ink, and varying also the form of paper from a slip to a sheet. In the latter part of August, 1837, the operation of the instruments was shown to numerous visitors at the university. It was early a question between Professor Morse and myself what was the limit of the magnetic power to move a lever. I expressed a doubt whether the lever could be moved by this power at a distance of twenty miles; and my settled conviction was that it could not be done with sufficient force to mark characters on paper at a hundred miles distant. To this Professor Morse was accustomed to reply, ‘If I can succeed in working a magnet ten miles, I can go round the globe.’ He often said to me: ‘It matters not how delicate the movement may be, if I can obtain it at all, it is all I want.’ He always expressed his confidence of success in propagating magnetic power through any distance of electric conductors which circumstances might render desirable. This plan was often explained to me. Suppose, said Professor Morse, that in experimenting on twenty miles of wire, we should find the power of magnetism so feeble that it will move a lever with certainty but a hairs breadth; that might be insufficient, it may be, to write or print, yet it would be sufficient to close and break another or second circuit twenty miles further on, and a second circuit could be made in the same manner to break and close a third circuit twenty miles further, and so on round the globe. This general statement of the means to be resorted to was shown to me more in detail early in the spring of the year 1837.” The plan as explained to Professor Gale was that the current on reaching the end of one conducting wire, round which wire was wound so as to form that end into an electro-magnet, could attract to it an armature (or movable hand) of a contiguous wire, and the hand thus moved being connected with a fresh battery, it both continued the circuit and replenished the current. After a few weeks of trial the use of metal blocks or types to regulate the recording marks was abandoned, and although the construction of the handle, called the manipulator, for regulating the transmission at intervals of sufficient electricity to produce the marks, was a later improvement, he ever afterwards declared that his first rude instrument had the leading features that characterised the more perfect apparatus of later years; or to use his own appropriate words, “It lisped its first accents and automatically recorded them in New York. It was a feeble child indeed, ungainly in its dress, stammering in its speech. But the maladies of its unfledged infancy were mainly the results of its parents struggles against poverty.”

Here let us pause and see him as others saw him. Let us see how some of his own friends viewed his labours as an artist and inventor during those times of adversity which the gods are said to view with complacency. One of his pupils, Mr. Daniel Huntington, who afterwards became President of the Academy of Fine Arts, says: “The studio of Professor Morse was indeed a laboratory. Vigorous, life-like portraits, poetic and historic groups, occasionally grew upon his easel; but there were many hours—yes, days—when, absorbed in study among galvanic batteries and mysterious lines of wire, he seemed to us like an alchemist of the middle ages in search of the philosopher’s stone. I can never forget the occasion when he called his pupils together to witness one of the first, if not the first, successful experiment with the electric telegraph. It was in the winter of 1835-6. I can see now that rude instrument constructed with an old stretching frame, a wooden clock, a home-made battery, and the wire stretched many times round the walls of the studio. With eager interest we gathered about it, as our master explained its operation, while with a click, click, click, the pencil, by a succession of dots and lines, recorded the messages in cipher. The idea was born, but we had little faith. To us it seemed a dream of enthusiasm. We grieved to see the sketch upon the canvas untouched.” In like manner, Mr. William Cullen Bryant, who had become acquainted with Morse some years before the telegraph entered his mind, says: “He was then an artist, devoted to a profession in which he might have attained high rank had he not, fortunately for his country and the world, left it for a pursuit in which he has risen to more peculiar eminence. Even then in the art of painting, his tendency to mechanical invention was conspicuous. His mind, as I remember, was strongly impelled to analyse the processes of his art—to give to them a certain scientific precision, to reduce them to fixed rules, to refer effects to clearly defined causes, so as to put it in the power of an artist to produce them at pleasure and with certainty, instead of blindly groping for them, and in the end owing them to some happy accident or some instinctive effort of which he could give no account. The mind of Morse was an organising mind. He showed this in a remarkable manner when he brought together the artists of New York, then a little band mostly of young men whose profession was far from being honoured as it now is, reconciled the disagreements which he found existing among them, and founded an association to be managed solely by themselves—the Academy of the Arts of Design, which has since grown to such noble dimensions, and which has given to the artists a consideration in the community far higher than that before conceded to them.... It was not till 1835 that Morse found means to demonstrate to the public the practicability of his invention by the telegraph constructed on an economical scale and set up at the New York University. The public, however, still seemed indifferent. There was none of the loud applause, none of that enthusiastic reception which it now seems natural should attend the birth of so brilliant a discovery. I confess I was not without my share in the general misgiving, and although the processes employed were exceedingly curious and highly creditable to the inventor, I had my fears that the new telegraph might prove little more than a most ingenious scientific pastime easily getting out of order in consequence of the delicacy of its construction, not capable of being used to advantage for great distances, and for short ones only suitable for messages in their most abbreviated form. The inventor, however, saw further than we all, and I think never lost courage. Yet I remember that some three or four years after this, he said to me with some disappointment, ‘Wheatstone in England and Steinheil in Bavaria, who have their electric telegraphs, are afforded the means of bringing forward their methods, while to my invention of earlier date than theirs my country seems to show no favour.’”

An incident which began in 1835 and extended into 1836 throws some light on the character and sympathies of the disappointed inventor. In August of the latter year he published a little book entitled: The Proscribed German Student: being a Sketch of some interesting Incidents in the Life and melancholy Death of the late Lewis Clausing; to which is added a treatise on the Jesuits: the posthumous work of Lewis Clausing. In the Introduction, Professor Morse stated that in the autumn of 1835 a stranger and foreigner came to his house and introduced himself to him, apologising for his interruption, and asking whether he was the author of a work on Foreign Conspiracy.[9] On Professor Morse replying in the affirmative, Clausing asked him as a favour to peruse a manuscript with a view to recommending it to a publisher. Asked why he had selected Morse to pass an opinion on the book, Clausing replied that in his own country, Heidelberg, he had incurred the enmity of the Jesuits because he did not raise his cap when the procession of the Host was passing in the street. In consequence of that offence an ecclesiastic left the procession and struck off his cap in a passionate manner. Clausing afterwards went to the ecclesiastic’s house, and shot him in the face, but not fatally. After being in prison awaiting sentence for eleven months, he escaped in 1833, and since then the Jesuits had pursued him wherever he went, in France, Brussels, and London, and now in America. Having in the West met with Morse’s work on Foreign Conspiracies against the United States, he found out the author, “for,” he said “if there is a man in the world who I can be sure is not a Jesuit, it is the writer who signs himself Brutus.”

Professor Morse gives an interesting and sympathetic account of the way he treated this poor young man, who called on him one evening at the New York University, but not finding him at home, wrote a letter to him in which he construed the most ordinary circumstances into plots, and concluded by saying that he saw daily more and more that nothing was so dangerous as to be an honest man among rogues; yet he never had done and never would do anything of which he could have the remotest reason to be ashamed. The letter ended “with true admiration for your noble character.” The young man, an accomplished scholar, aged twenty-five years, afterwards shot himself with a pistol while walking on a public promenade. His work on the Jesuits displayed great research and a considerable acquaintance with the literature and literary characters of his day. Professor Morse said of him that “he conversed in English fluently, with less foreign accent than was usually met with in foreigners of twenty years residence in the country, and he wrote a clear, fair, and neat hand. In his manners he was retiring and modest, and in his address he had that peculiar courtesy which belongs to well-educated Germans. He had a fine countenance, a steady expression, with a remarkable dark eye, which fixed itself steadily upon yours without winking, yet without severity; it was mild, and, in the last interviews with me, melancholy. He seemed particularly sensitive to kindness, and when, in the last interview, I urged him freely to call upon me at all times and unburden his bosom of its troubles, and endeavoured to cheer him by sympathy, he wept like a child.” The treatise on the Jesuits, which Professor Morse published immediately after the death of its author, filled nearly 200 small pages, and it was preceded by an account of its author’s career from the pen of the Professor; who thus showed that at the most trying period of his life, when absorbed himself in secret cares and beset by chilling poverty, he could freely spend his time and money in promoting the last wishes of a poor foreigner.

In 1837 circumstances occurred which hastened his preparations for the public display of his telegraph. In February of that year the House of Representatives resolved to instruct the Secretary to the Treasury to report next session upon the propriety of establishing a system of telegraphs in the United States. A copy of the circular making inquiries on the subject was sent to Professor Morse, who in reply gave a detailed estimate of the cost of his telegraph and a history of its invention. In April of the same year it was announced in the newspapers that a wonderful telegraph had been invented by two Frenchmen; and Professor Morse and his friends took alarm lest the invention of his electro-magnetic telegraph had become known and appropriated by other hands. It turned out afterwards that the announcement in question referred to a visual telegraph and was of no importance, but it had the useful effect of rousing Professor Morse to more energetic steps for the purpose of bringing his invention creditably before the public. He also consented to a public announcement of the existence of his invention in the New York Observer, and from April to September, 1837, he and Professor Gale were busy preparing magnets, winding wire, and constructing batteries, with the view of making public experiments on a larger scale.