Once fairly started, the telegraph in America made such rapid strides as soon eclipsed its progress in those countries in which it had an earlier start. Within half a dozen years about thirty Companies were formed to carry on the work of telegraphic extension, and to reap the profits of an invention which the Government could not be induced to accept. Sir Robert Inglis, in his address as President of the British Association meeting at Oxford in June, 1847, stated that he had just received a report presented to the Legislative Council and Assembly of New Brunswick relating to a project for constructing a railway and a line of telegraph from Halifax to Quebec, with reference to which he said: “Distance is time, and when by steam, whether on water or on land, personal communication is facilitated, and when orders are conveyed from one extremity of the Empire to another almost like a flash of lightning, the facility of governing a large State becomes almost equal to the facility of governing the smallest. I remember reading many years ago in the Scotsman an ingenious and able article showing how England could be governed as easily as Attica under Pericles; and I believe the same conclusion was deduced by William Cobbett from the same illustration. The system is daily extending. It was, however, in the United States of America that it was first adopted on a great scale, by Professor Morse in 1844; and it is there that it is now already developed most extensively. Lines for above 1,300 miles are in action, and connect those States with Her Majesty’s Canadian provinces; and it is in a course of development so rapid that, in the words of the Report of Mr. Wilkinson to Sir W. E. Colebrooke, the Governor of New Brunswick, no schedule of telegraphic lines can now be relied upon for a month in succession, as hundreds of miles may be added in that space of time. So easy of attainment does such a result appear to be, and so lively is the interest felt in its accomplishment, that it is scarcely doubtful that the whole of the populous parts of the United States will, within two or three years, be covered with a network like a spider’s web, suspending its principal threads upon important points, along the sea board of the Atlantic on one side, and upon similar points along the Lake Frontier on the other. I am indebted to the same Report for another fact, which I think of equal interest: The confidence in the efficiency of telegraphic communication has now become so established, that the most important commercial transactions daily transpire, by its means, between correspondents several hundred miles apart. Ocular evidence of this was afforded by a communication a few minutes old between a merchant in Toronto and his correspondent in New York, distant about 632 miles. When the Hibernia steamer arrived in Boston in January, 1847, with the news of the scarcity in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of Europe, and with heavy orders for agricultural produce, the farmers in the interior of the State of New York—informed of the state of things by the Magnetic Telegraph—were thronging the streets of Albany with innumerable team-loads of grain almost as quickly after the arrival of the steamer at Boston as the news of that arrival could ordinarily have reached them. I may add that, irrespectively of all its advantages to the general community, the system appears to give already a fair return of interest to the individuals or companies who have invested their capital in its application. I cannot refer to the extent of the lines of the electric telegraph in America without an increased feeling of regret that in England this great discovery has been so inadequately adopted. So far at least as the capital is concerned, the two greatest of our railway companies have not, I believe, yet carried the electric telegraph further from London than to Watford and Slough.”
About the same time Professor Morse stated that, as the result of improvements in his telegraph, the President’s entire message on the subject of the war with Mexico was transmitted with perfect accuracy at the rate of ninety-nine letters per minute. His skilful operators in Washington and Baltimore printed these characters at the rate of 98, 101, 111, and one of them actually printed 117 letters per minute. It was pointed out that as an expert penman seldom writes legibly more than 100 letters per minute, the Morse telegraph then about equalled the most expeditious mode of recording thought.
Between 1844 and 1855 the telegraph was used for another purpose which was regarded in the world of science as of great importance. In 1839 Professor Morse, while in Paris, suggested to Arago that the telegraph might be used for determining the difference of longitude between places with an accuracy previously unattainable. The first experiment for the determination of longitude was made in 1844 at Baltimore, and fully realised the expectation of Professor Morse. The Battle Monument Square, Baltimore, was found to be 1 m. 34 sec. ·868 east of the capital at Washington, a difference of three quarters of a second from the former results recorded in the American Almanac. This may appear a trifling matter to unscientific readers, but a short explanation will show its importance. The latitude of any place—its distance from the equator north or south—can be accurately determined by astronomical observation; but its longitude, or distance east or west of any particular place agreed upon as a meridional standard, such as Greenwich, was often determined with difficulty. It is well known that in the diurnal rotation of the earth every portion of its surface is turned towards the sun once in twenty-four hours, and that noon occurs at places east of Greenwich earlier than at Greenwich, and later at places west of Greenwich. The difference between the local time at any particular place and Greenwich time is the longitude of that place from Greenwich; but much difficulty was formerly experienced in ascertaining the exact time at both places at the instant adopted for comparison. At sea it was formerly determined by elaborate observations of the position of the moon among the stars; and latterly both on land and sea it was generally done by carrying a good chronometer from the one place to the other, the difference between the local time and the Greenwich time recorded by the chronometer giving the longitude. But the exactness of this method depended upon the accuracy of the chronometer, and the rapidity with which it could be carried from one place to the other. But now by means of the telegraph, when the wire is kept clear for the purpose, the time at one place can be instantaneously transmitted to another place; and if the local time at each place is correct, the difference gives the longitude.
It is worthy of remark that just about a century before the invention of the Morse telegraph the marine chronometer was invented by John Harrison, an ingenious cabinet maker, expressly for the purpose of determining longitude at sea; and he was induced to do so by the British Government offering a reward of 20,000l. 15,000l. or 10,000l. for a discovery which might prove successful in determining longitude at sea. Now Morse, without any offer of reward, invented his telegraph, and not only suggested its use for determining longitude on land, but himself directed the first experiment between Washington and Baltimore to prove its practicability for that purpose. In 1847 it was announced that the relative longitudes of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington had been determined by means of the telegraph, and it was added that two important facts, before known theoretically, were then practically demonstrated, that a clock in New York could be compared with another at a distance of 200 miles quite as accurately as two clocks in adjoining rooms, and that “the time required for the electric fluid to travel from New York to Washington and back again, a distance of 450 miles, is so small a fraction of a second that it is inappreciable to the most practised observer.” So well was this method appreciated that Lieutenant Maury, of the United States Navy, stated in 1849, that as the electric telegraph then extended through all the States of the Union, except perhaps Arkansas, Texas, and one other frontier, “a splendid field is presented for doing the world a service by connecting, for difference of longitude through means of magnetic telegraph and clock, all the principal points of this country with the Observatory at Washington. In anticipation of such extension of the wires, I ordered an instrument for the purpose, and it has recently arrived. It is intended to determine latitude also—so that by its means and this clock I hope, during the year, to know pretty accurately the geographical position of Montreal, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, &c., and their difference of longitude from Washington, quite as correctly as the difference between Greenwich and Paris has been established by the usual method and after many years of observation.”
The telegraphic method was first tried in England in May, 1853, when the Astronomer Royal ascertained the difference of longitude between the observatories of Greenwich and Cambridge. On the Continent Professor Encke in the same year determined the difference of longitude between Berlin and Frankfort-on-the-Main; and the difference between Greenwich and Paris was determined in 1854.
In 1853, eight years after the opening of the first line of telegraph in America, there were 25,000 miles of wire erected at a cost of 1,000,000l., and it was reported that in working these lines there were consumed 720 tons of zinc, worth 12,000l., over 1,000,000 lbs. of nitric acid, worth 24,000l., and 6,000l. worth of mercury in a year. The most distant points then connected by telegraph were the cities of Halifax (Nova Scotia) and Quebec with New Orleans, a length of 2,000 miles. The distance by telegraph between New York and New Orleans was 3,000 miles, and messages from the one town to the other were delivered in an hour. A report published in 1853, stated that by the aid of the telegraph the vast republic of America, 3,000 miles long by 3,000 broad, could be as easily managed and governed as a single city, and that “a long experience in America,” with some dozen different lines of telegraph, established the fact that the velocity of the electric current was about 15,400 miles per second. The time occupied in transmission between Boston and Bangor having been exactly measured, it was found to be the sixteen-thousandth part of a second, the velocity of the current being at the rate of 16,000 miles per second, or about 600 miles per second more than the average of other experiments in that country.
In 1886 it was computed that on the telegraph lines of the United States 30,000 Morse sounders were in daily use, and that the total consumption of copper in the local batteries amounted to about 750,000 lbs. per annum, which cost 6,300l., together with 100,000 lbs. of zinc which cost 1,200l.
FIG. 1
