Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

“Though living virtue we despise;

When dead, we praise it to the skies.”

And a later Roman writer endeavoured to explain this anomalous treatment by stating that “we envy the living by whose merit we think ourselves overwhelmed, but we venerate departed merit because we are edified by it.” Human nature has not changed much since the Augustan age; but in nothing perhaps has public feeling in our own time undergone such a revolution as in respect to inventors. Some may think that this change can be accounted for by the greatness of the benefits which inventors have wrought in our day. But there have been great inventors before now. “If one looks back,” says Mr. J. L. Ricardo, “to the times when the most important inventions were produced, it appears they were all made without even a patent, so far as we can discover. For instance, arithmetic, writing, and all the first great inventions, to which we are so habituated that we scarce think they have been invented any more than the flowers or trees, yet were mighty inventions in their time. Paper was invented in the year 1200, oil painting in the year 1297, glass in 1310, printing in 1430, and gunpowder in 1450. All these inventions, or very many of them, were made by men without artificial stimulus, often at the peril of their lives, when their reward was not a monopoly, but perhaps the stake or the gibbet.” It may be observed, however, that most of these “great inventions” might more accurately be described as the result of the discovery of natural laws, and hence they were generally ascribed to alchemy or sorcery; whereas in our day the inventions that have been most beneficial have been of a mechanical description. There is scarcely a machine now in use that is not an invention of modern times; and while many of the discoveries, called inventions, of former ages were made accidentally, who would ever think of saying that the complicated machinery in use nowadays was invented by accident? Obviously it has been the result of labour, skill, and knowledge; and its effect is to save labour and supersede skill. It is probably the greater effort required in the production of modern machinery, and its obvious utility when in operation, that have secured for inventors an honourable place in public estimation, as well as more adequate remuneration for their services. At all events such was the case with the Morse telegraph.

Not that its success was unalloyed with detraction. After its utility was fully established, one company after another contested its originality or the validity of his patent rights, which had consequently to be protected by costly law suits. The first of these took place at Louisville, Kentucky, in August, 1848. The owners of the Morse system arranged to construct a line from that town to Nashville, Tennessee; and Henry O’Reilly, supported by a company, constructed a rival line, and called it the People’s Line, which they at first tried to work by a piece of electrical apparatus that was only a modification of the Morse system, the principle of which they contended they were justified in using on the ground that it did not originate with Morse. After a patent trial of the case, the court granted an injunction against the O’Reilly Company, and sustained the validity of the Morse patent. The Supreme Court of the United States, on appeal, confirmed this decision in January, 1854. The court held it as established by evidence that “early in the spring of 1837 Morse invented his plan for combining two or more electric or galvanic circuits, with independent batteries, for the purpose of overcoming the diminished force of electro-magnetism in long circuits, that there is reasonable ground for believing that he had so far completed his invention that the whole process, combination, powers, and machinery were arranged in his mind, and that the delay in bringing it out arose from want of means.” The court also held that “neither the inquiries Morse made nor the information or advice he received from men of science, in the course of his researches, impair his right to the character of an inventor. No invention can possibly be made, consisting of a combination of different elements of power, without a thorough knowledge of the properties of each of them, and the mode in which they operate upon each other. A very high degree of scientific knowledge and the nicest skill in the mechanic arts are combined in the electro-magnetic telegraph and were necessary to bring it into successful operation. It is the high praise of Professor Morse that he has been able by a new combination of known powers, of which electro-magnetism is one, to discover a method by which intelligible marks or signs may be printed at a distance.” Such were the sort of compliments that the Supreme Court bestowed upon Professor Morse, while they amply vindicated the validity of his patents.

Another case was heard at Philadelphia in September, 1851. It was an action brought by the Magnetic Telegraph Company, who used the Morse patent, against Henry J. Rogers and others who worked a line of telegraph from Washington to New York on the system of Alexander Bain. This ingenious but unlucky invention, which Mr. Bain made in 1846, was represented as capable of transmitting from 1,000 to 2,000 letters a minute. By means of a machine, holes were stamped in a long strip of paper, and each hole or group of holes represented a particular letter. The paper was coiled on a wooden roller, from which it passed to a metal roller; the mechanism was so arranged that two metallic points underneath the paper passed through the holes as they moved along, and thus touching the metal of the roller, imparted sufficient electricity to make a signal at the distant end of the wire; but when the points only touched the paper no electricity passed. This rapid alternation was made to indicate signals. In the recipient apparatus, which marked the signals at the distant end of the connecting wire, the strip of paper used was first soaked in dilute sulphuric acid, and then in a solution of prussiate of potash; two metallic points pressed on that paper, and when electricity passed through these points, it discoloured the chemically prepared paper and left a number of dark spots on it; but when no electricity passed no spots were produced. In America it was alleged that those who used this apparatus violated Morse’s patent by forming their alphabet and figures (though using chemicals instead of ink) in the same way that Morse did—by dots and lines, although the same dots and lines did not in both systems represent the same letter or figure. The claim of Professor Morse as the inventor of the principle of the dot and dash alphabet was consequently disputed by the defendants. But the judges held that there was no one person whose invention had been spoken of by witnesses or referred to in any book as involving the principle of Morse’s discovery but must yield precedence to him, and that neither Steinheil, nor Cooke and Wheatstone, nor Davy, nor Dyer, nor Henry had, when the Morse invention was consummated early in the spring of 1837, made a recording telegraph of any sort. In this case the evidence filled over a thousand printed pages; and in other trials the evidence filled many hundreds of pages.

Only in one case did a rival inventor establish valid claims to originality. This was Mr. Royal E. House, the inventor of the printing telegraph, which was described in 1851, when it came into use, as one of the wonders of the age. He invented a machine which, when a message was transmitted by electric currents over a single wire, printed the words in Roman letters that any person could read. For that invention House applied for a patent in 1846, but was refused it on the ground that his specification in some points clashed with that of Morse. It was not till towards the end of 1848 that he got a patent which dated from April, 1846. He was a self-taught man, who was confined to his dwelling-house with an affection of the eyes during most of the six years that he had been engaged in constructing his instrument. The sending apparatus for despatching messages resembled a pianette, in which each key represented a letter of the alphabet, and the sender had simply to press down the key representing any desired letter, and the receiving apparatus at the other end of the telegraph wire printed that letter on a strip of paper. The electric current moved a wheel around the edge of which were the letters of the alphabet in type properly inked; and when the particular letter desired came round to the point nearest the paper tape, the letter was by self-acting mechanism pressed against it, causing the letter to be printed on the tape. It was stated that 160 letters could be transmitted and printed in that way in a minute. The first line of telegraph worked by the House apparatus was completed in August, 1850, by the Boston and New York Telegraph Company. Proceedings were at once taken against that company by the owner of the Morse patent, of which the House apparatus was alleged to be an infringement. Judge Woodbury, after hearing much evidence and argument, came to the conclusion that the two methods of telegraphing differed as much as writing differed from printing. He said the Morse apparatus was less complicated and more easily comprehended; it could be readily understood by most mechanics and men of science; while the House machine was so much more difficult to comprehend in its operations that it required days, if not weeks, to master it. At the same time he declared that House had given “letters to lightning,” as well as “lightning to letters.” While he admitted that the principle of the House telegraph was not new, although now ingeniously applied and worked by a new power, he gave Morse every credit for originality in his invention, and decided in the end that the one was not an infringement of the other.

The Morse alphabet, the originality of which was practically undisputed, has not only been found universally useful for telegraphic purposes, but has been successfully used for signalling intelligence where no electric telegraph was available. Its characters have been exhibited from lighthouses in long and short flashes of electric light to tell the lonely mariner in the darkness of night the name of the coast he was passing; while in lands where the electric telegraph is unknown it has enabled a revival of the old semaphore system to be worked with great advantages. When the British squadron entered Burmah in the end of 1885, communication was kept up between the different portions of the forces by means of the heliostat and heliograph, sun-signalling instruments, which displayed to distant stations dots or dashes of light forming the Morse alphabet. In the heliograph the signalling was effected by altering the angle of the mirror which reflected the light; while in the heliostat the requisite flash was transmitted by opening temporarily a shutter, which when shut obscured the light. The Morse alphabet thus enables distant stations to speak by means of light as well as electricity.

At the time when the laying of the Atlantic cable was absorbing public attention, Professor Morse was enjoying the fruits of his previous labours. Rewards and honours were freely bestowed on him. During his long and often disheartening struggle with adversity, he was not without honour in his own and in other countries. In 1835 he was elected a corresponding member of the Historical Institute of France; in 1837 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Belgium; in 1839 he received the great silver medal of the Paris Academy of Industry for his invention of the telegraph; in 1841 he was made a corresponding member of the Washington Institute for the Promotion of Science; in 1842 he was awarded the gold medal of the American Institute for his experiments demonstrating submarine telegraphy; in 1845 he was made a corresponding member of the Archæological Society of Belgium; in 1847 he was made an honorary Doctor of Laws of Yale College; in 1849 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, and so on.

What he wanted during these years was emolument, and now that had come to him after long years of patient expectation. Though his patent was not put in profitable operation till 1846, he received before the date of its expiration, 1854, a sum of 90,874 dollars, and during the seven following years, for which it was renewed, over 70,000 dollars. His fame had now become world-wide, and foreign honours were bestowed upon him by the chief European sovereigns. In June, 1856, he visited England, and was delighted to meet once more with several of his old artist friends: men who had befriended him when in humble circumstances he showed a special pleasure in meeting now, when he had attained pre-eminent success in another vocation. From London he proceeded to Copenhagen, where the King of Denmark, Frederick VII., presented him with the Cross of a Knight of the Danneborg. He was thence invited to Russia by the Emperor Alexander II., who sent his carriage to convey him from the quay on landing to the Imperial Palace, where he was treated as an honoured guest. Then he went to Berlin, where he again met the author of the Cosmos, Alexander von Humboldt, who entertained him hospitably, and presented him with a portrait of himself on the margin of which he had written as an inscription the homage of his high and affectionate esteem for Mr. S. F. B. Morse, “whose philosophical and useful labours have rendered his name illustrious in two worlds.” Returning to London in September, he was next month entertained at a public banquet in the Albion Tavern on the same day that he received the announcement that the Emperor Napoleon had made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. At that banquet Mr. W. F. Cooke stated that Professor Morse stood alone in America as the originator and carrier out of a grand conception; but that not content with giving the benefit of his conception to his own country and Canada, he threatened to go still further, and, if Englishmen would not do it, to carry telegraphic communication across the Atlantic. Dr. O’Shaughnessy stated at the banquet that he had made a journey from India to England in order to introduce into India the system of telegraphing which had been perfected by Professor Morse. It was this gentleman who, according to his own statement, erected in April and May, 1839, “the first long line of telegraph ever constructed in any country” in the vicinity of Calcutta. His line was twenty-one miles long, and included 7,000 feet of river circuit. In after years he was accustomed to state that it was the experiments performed on that line which removed all reasonable doubts regarding the practicability of working electric telegraphs through enormous distances,—“a question then and for three years later disputed by high authorities, and regarded generally with contemptuous scepticism.” After the experiments were completed and published, the line was taken down. It may therefore be said of Dr. O’Shaughnessy that he was in a double sense the father of Indian telegraphy, and as such he received the honour of knighthood.

It thus appears that the three men who were the pioneers in practical telegraphy were Morse in America, Wheatstone in England, and O’Shaughnessy in India. In after ages it may be a question of biographical interest whether these three men, whose triumphs took place in scenes so far apart, ever met together. A similar question has been asked of another constellation of great men. “It is a remarkable fact,” says Sir David Brewster, “in the history of astronomy, that three of its most distinguished professors were contemporaries. Galileo was the contemporary of Tycho during thirty-seven years and of Kepler during fifty-nine years of his life. Galileo was born seven years before Kepler, and survived him nearly the same time. We have not learned that the intellectual triumvirate of the age enjoyed any opportunity of mutual congratulation. What a privilege it would have been to have contrasted the aristocratic dignity of Tycho with the reckless ease of Kepler, and the manly and impetuous mien of the Italian sage.” It is possible that three or four centuries hence similar speculations may be indulged in with respect to the group of remarkable men who made the electric telegraph a practical success in different parts of the world. It may therefore be worth while here to state that there is no record of Professor Wheatstone and Professor Morse ever having met personally either for mutual congratulation or recrimination. In several respects they were men of like qualities—modest, unselfish, persevering, versatile, and ingenious in everything except extemporaneous public speaking—a similitude which might perhaps be held to account for the fact that there was no love lost between them, if it be true, as Saint Pierre contends, that men are more attached to those qualities that are the complement of their own than to those that are the counterpart of their own—an observation that would not apply to the three professors of astronomy. Anyhow, the absence of Professor Wheatstone from the banquet given to Professor Morse in London in 1856 was publicly commented on at the time in the leading English journal, to which a member of the committee wrote, in reply, that “it was intended to pay all honour to Professor Wheatstone, but to the regret of every one at the dinner he was unable to attend: his pre-eminent merits as an electrical engineer were repeatedly acknowledged during the evening, and always with the warmest reception by the whole company.” Nevertheless, in the calm perspective of history posterity will probably regard that opportunity for mutual congratulation as a privilege that ought not to have been lost.