Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals Volume II Part 5

This refers to portraits of various members of the Vail family which he had undertaken to execute while he was in Morristown. Farther on in the letter he says:--

"The machinery for the Telegraph goes forward daily; slowly but well and thorough. You will be surprised at the strength and quant.i.ty of machinery, greater, doubtless, than will eventually be necessary, yet it gives the main points, certainty and accuracy."

It may be well to note here that Morse evidently foresaw that the machinery constructed by Alfred Vail was too heavy and c.u.mbersome; that more delicate workmans.h.i.+p would later be called for, and this proved to be the case. The iron works at Morristown were only adapted to the manufacture of heavy machinery for s.h.i.+ps, etc., and Alfred Vail had had experience in that cla.s.s of work only, so that he naturally made the telegraphic instruments much heavier and more unwieldy than was necessary. While these answered the purpose for the time being, they were soon superseded by instruments of greater delicacy and infinitely smaller bulk made by more skilful hands.

The future looked bright to the sanguine inventor in the early days of the year 1838, as we learn from the following letter to his brother Sidney, written on the 13th of January:--

"Mr. Alfred Vail is just going in to New York and will return on Monday morning. The machinery is at length completed and we have shown it to the Morristown people with great _eclat_. It is the talk of all the people round, and the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of Newark made a special excursion on Friday to see it. The success is complete. We have tried the experiment of sending a pretty full letter, which I set up from the numbers given me, transmitting through two miles of wire and deciphered with but a single unimportant error.

"I am staying out to perfect a modification of my portrule and hope to see you on Tuesday, or, at the farthest, on Wednesday, when I shall tell you all about it. The matter looks well now, and I desire to feel grateful to Him who gives success, and be always prepared for any disappointment which He in infinite wisdom may have in store."

We see from this letter, and from an account which appeared in the Morristown "Journal," that in these exhibitions the messages were sent by numbers with the aid of the c.u.mbersome dictionary which Morse had been at such pains to compile. Very soon after this, however, as will appear from what follows, the dictionary was discarded forever, and the Morse alphabet came into practical use.

The following invitation was sent from the New York University on January 22, 1838:--

"Professor Morse requests the honor of Thomas S. c.u.mmings, Esq., and family's company in the Geological Cabinet of the University, Was.h.i.+ngton Square, to witness the operation of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph at a private exhibition of it to a few friends, previous to its leaving the city for Was.h.i.+ngton.

"The apparatus will be prepared at precisely twelve o'clock on Wednesday, 24th instant. The time being limited punctuality is specially requested."

Similar invitations were sent to other prominent persons and a very select company gathered at the appointed hour. That the exhibition was a success we learn from the following account in the "Journal of Commerce"

of January 29, 1838:--

"THE TELEGRAPH.--We did not witness the operation of Professor Morse's Electro-Magnetic Telegraph on Wednesday last, but we learn that the numerous company of scientific persons who were present p.r.o.nounced it entirely successful. Intelligence was instantaneously transmitted through a circuit of TEN MILES, and legibly written on a cylinder at the extremity of the circuit. The great advantages which must result to the public from this invention will warrant an outlay on the part of the Government sufficient to test its practicability as a general means of transmitting intelligence.

"Professor Morse has recently improved on his mode of marking by which he can dispense altogether with the telegraphic dictionary, using letters instead of numbers, and he can transmit ten words per minute, which is more than double the number which can be transmitted by means of the dictionary."

A charming and rather dramatic incident occurred at this exhibition which was never forgotten by those who witnessed it. General c.u.mmings had just been appointed to a military command, and one of his friends, with this fact evidently in mind, wrote a message on a piece of paper and, without showing it to any one else, handed it to Morse. The a.s.sembled company was silent and only the monotonous clicking of the strange instrument was heard as the message was ticked off in the dots and dashes, and then from the other end of the ten miles of wire was read out this sentence pregnant with meaning:--

"Attention, the Universe, by kingdoms right wheel." The name of the man who indited that message seems not to have been preserved, but, whoever he was, he must have been gifted with prophetic vision, and he must have realized that he was a.s.sisting at an occasion which was destined to mark the beginning of a new era in civilization. The attention of the universe was, indeed, before long attracted to this child of Morse's brain, and kingdom after kingdom wheeled into line, vying with each other in admiration and acceptance.

The message was recorded fourfold by means of a newly invented fountain pen, and was given to General c.u.mmings and preserved by him. It is here reproduced.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ATTENTION THE UNNIVERSE! BY KINGDOMS RIGHT WHEEL!"

Facsimile of the First Morse Alphabet Message, now In the National Museum, Was.h.i.+ngton]

It will be noticed that the signs for the letters are those, not of the first form of the alphabet as embodied in the drawing attached to the caveat, but of the finally adopted code. This has led some historians, notably Mr. Franklin Leonard Pope, to infer that some mistake has been made in giving out this as a facsimile of this early message; that the letters should have been those of the earlier alphabet. I think, however, that this is but an added proof that Morse devised the first form of the code long before he met Vail, and that the changes to the final form, a description of which I have given, were made by Morse in 1837, or early in 1838, as soon as he became convinced of the superiority of the alphabetic mode, in plenty of time to have been used in this exhibition.

The month of January, 1838, was a busy one at Morristown, for Morse and Vail were bending all their energies toward the perfecting and completion of the instruments, so that a demonstration of the telegraph could be given in Was.h.i.+ngton at as early a date as possible. Morse refers feelingly to the trials and anxieties of an inventor in a letter to a friend, dated January 22, 1838:--

"I have just returned from nearly six weeks' absence at Morristown, New Jersey, where I have been engaged in the superintendence of the making of my Telegraph for Was.h.i.+ngton.

"Be thankful, C----, that you are not an inventor. Invention may seem an easy way to _fame_, or, what is the same thing to many, _notoriety_, different as are in reality the two objects. But it is far otherwise. I, indeed, desire the first, for true fame implies well-deserving, but I have no wish for the latter, which yet seems inseparable from it.

"The condition of an inventor is, indeed, not enviable. I know of but one condition that renders it in any degree tolerable, and that is the reflection that his fellow-men may be benefited by his discoveries. In the outset, if he has really made a _discovery_, which very word implies that it was before unknown to the world, he encounters the incredulity, the opposition, and even the sneers of many, who look upon him with a kind of pity, as a little beside himself if not quite mad. And, while maturing his invention, he has the comfort of reflection, in all the various discouragements he meets with from petty failures, that, should he by any means fail in the grand result, he subjects himself rather to the ridicule than the sympathy of his acquaintances, who will not be slow in attributing his failure to a want of that common sense in which, by implication, they so much abound, and which preserves them from the consequences of any such delusions.

"But you will, perhaps, think that there is an offset in the honors and emoluments that await the successful inventor, one who has really demonstrated that he has made an important discovery. This is not so.

Trials of another kind are ready for him after the appropriate difficulties of his task are over. Many stand ready to s.n.a.t.c.h the prize, or at least to claim a share, so soon as the success of an invention seems certain, and honor and profit alone remain to be obtained.

"This long prelude, C----, brings me at the same time to the point of my argument and to my excuse for my long silence. My argument goes to prove that, unless there is a benevolent consideration in our discoveries, one which enables us to rejoice that others are benefited even though we should suffer loss, our happiness from any honor awarded to a successful invention is exposed to constant danger from the designs of the unprincipled. My excuse is that, ever since the receipt of your most welcome letter, I have been engaged in preparing to repel a threatened invasion of my rights to the invention of the Telegraph by a fellow-pa.s.senger from France, one from whom I least expected any such insidious design. The attempt startled me and put me on my guard, and set me to the preparation for any attack. I have been compelled for some weeks to use my pen only for this purpose, and have written much in the hope of preventing the public exposure of my antagonist; but I fear my labor will be vain on this point, from what I hear and the tone in which he writes. I have no fear for myself, being now amply prepared with evidence to repel any attempt which may be made to sustain any claim he may prefer to a share with me in the invention of the Telegraph."

I have already shown that this claim of Dr. Jackson's was proved to be but the hallucination of a disordered brain, and it will not be necessary to go into the details of the controversy.

These were anxious and nerve-racking days for both Morse and Vail, and it is small wonder that there should have been some slight friction. Vail in his private correspondence makes some mention of this. For instance, in a letter to his brother George, of January 22, 1838, he says:--

"We received the machine on Thursday morning, and in an hour we made the first trial, which did not succeed, nor did it with perfect success until Sat.u.r.day--all which time Professor M. was rather _unwell_. To-morrow we shall make our first exhibition, and continue it until Wednesday, when we must again box up. Professor M. has received a letter from Mr. Patterson inviting us to exhibit at Philadelphia, and has answered it, but has said nothing to me about his intentions. He is altogether inclined to operate in his own name, so much so that he has had printed five hundred blank invitations in his own name at your expense."

On the other hand, this same George Vail, writing to Morse on January 26, 1838, asks him to "bear with A., which I have no doubt you will. He is easily vexed. Trusting to your universal coolness, however, there is nothing to fear. Keep him from running ahead too fast."

Again writing to his brother George from Was.h.i.+ngton, on February 20, 1838, Alfred says: "In regard to Professor M. calling me his '_a.s.sistant_,' this is also settled, and he has said as much as to apologize for using the term."

Why Vail should have objected to being called Morse's a.s.sistant, I cannot quite understand, for he was so designated in the contract later made with the Government; but Morse was evidently willing to humor him in this.

I have thought it best to refer to these little incidents partly in the interest of absolute candor, partly to emphasize the nervous tension under which both were working at that time. That there was no lasting resentment in the mind of Vail is amply proved by the following extract from a long letter written by him on March 19, 1838:--

"The great expectations I had on my return home of going into partners.h.i.+p with George, founded, or semi-founded, on the promises made by my father, have burst. I am again on vague promises for three months, and they resting upon the success of the printing machine.

"I feel, Professor Morse, that, if I am ever worth anything, it will be wholly attributable to your kindness. I now should have no _earthly_ prospect of happiness and domestic bliss had it not been for what you have done. For which I shall ever remember [you] with the liveliest emotions of grat.i.tude, whether it is eventually successful or not."

Aside from the slight friction to which I have referred, and which was most excusable under the circ.u.mstances, the joint work on the telegraph proceeded harmoniously. The invitation from Mr. Patterson, to exhibit the instrument before the Committee of Science and Arts of the Franklin Inst.i.tute of Philadelphia, was accepted. The exhibition took place on February 8, and was a p.r.o.nounced success, and the committee, in expressing their gratification, voiced the hope that the Government would provide the funds for an experiment on an adequate scale.

From Philadelphia Morse proceeded to Was.h.i.+ngton accompanied by Vail, confidently believing that it would only be necessary to demonstrate the practicability of his invention to the country's legislators a.s.sembled in Congress, in order to obtain a generous appropriation to enable him properly to test it. But he had not taken into account that trait of human nature which I shall dignify by calling it "conservatism," in order not to give it a harder name.

The room of the Committee on Commerce was placed at his disposal, and there he hopefully strung his ten miles of wire and connected them with his instruments. Outwardly calm but inwardly nervous and excited, as he realized that he was facing a supreme moment in his career, he patiently explained to all who came, Congressmen, men of science, representatives of foreign governments, and hard-headed men of business, the workings of the instrument and proved its feasibility. The majority saw and wondered, but went away unconvinced. On February 21, President Martin Van Buren and his entire Cabinet, at their own special request, visited the room and saw the telegraph in operation. But no action was taken by Congress; the time was not yet ripe for the general acceptance of such a revolutionary departure from the slow-going methods of that early period. While individuals here and there grasped the full significance of what the mysterious ticking of that curious instrument foretold, they were vastly in the minority. The world, through its representatives in the capital city of the United States, remained incredulous.

Among those who at once recognized the possibilities of the invention was Francis O.J. Smith, member of Congress from Portland, Maine, and chairman of the Committee on Commerce. He was a lawyer of much shrewdness and a man of great energy, and he very soon offered to become pecuniarily interested in the invention. Morse was, unfortunately, not a keen judge of men. Scrupulously honest and honorable himself, he had an almost childlike faith in the integrity of others, and all through his life he fell an easy victim to the schemes of self-seekers. In this case a man of more acute intuition would have hesitated, and would have made some enquiries before allying himself with one whose ideas of honor proved eventually to be so at variance with his own. Smith did so much in later years to injure Morse, and to besmirch his fame and good name, that I think it only just to give the following estimate of his character, made by the late Franklin Leonard Pope in an article contributed to the "Electrical World" in 1895:--

"A sense of justice compels me to say that the uncorroborated statements of F.O.J. Smith, in any matter affecting the credit or honor due to Professor Morse, should be allowed but little weight.... For no better reason than that Morse in 1843-1844 courteously but firmly refused to be a party to a questionable scheme devised by Smith for the irregular diversion into his own pocket of a portion of the governmental appropriation of $30,000 for the construction of the experimental line, he ever after cherished toward the inventor the bitterest animosity; a feeling which he took no pains to conceal. Many of his letters to him at that time, and for many years afterward, were couched in studiously insulting language, which must have been in the highest degree irritating to a sensitive artistic temperament like that of Morse.

"It probably by no means tended to mollify the disposition of such a man as Smith to find that Morse, in reply to these covert sneers and open insinuations, never once lost his self-control, nor permitted himself to depart from the dignified tone of rejoinder which becomes a gentleman in his dealings with one who, in his inmost nature, was essentially a blackguard."

However, it is an old saying that we must "give the devil his due," and the cloven foot did not appear at first. On the other hand, a man of business ac.u.men and legal knowledge was greatly needed at this stage of the enterprise, and Smith possessed them both. Morse was so grateful to find any one with faith enough to be willing to invest money in the invention; and to devote his time and energy to its furtherance, that he at once accepted Smith's offer, and he was made a partner and given a one-fourth interest, Morse retaining nine sixteenths, Vail two sixteenths, and Professor Gale, also admitted as a partner, being allotted one sixteenth. It was characteristic of Morse that he insisted, before signing the contract, that Smith should obtain leave of absence from Congress for the remainder of the term, and should not stand for reelection. It was agreed that Smith should accompany Morse to Europe as soon as possible and endeavor to secure patents in foreign countries, and, if successful, the profits were to be divided differently, Morse receiving eight sixteenths, Smith five, Vail two, and Gale one.

In spite of the incredulity of the many, Morse could not help feeling encouraged, and in a long letter to Smith, written on February 15, 1838, proposing an experiment of one hundred miles, he thus forecasts the future and proposes an intelligent plan of government control:--

"If no insurmountable obstacles present themselves in a distance of one hundred miles, none may be expected in one thousand or in ten thousand miles; and then will be presented for the consideration of the Government the propriety of completely organizing this _new telegraphic system as a part of the Government_, attaching it to some department already existing, or creating a new one which may be called for by the acc.u.mulating duties of the present departments.

"It is obvious, at the slightest glance, that this mode of instantaneous communication must inevitably become an instrument of immense power, to be wielded for good or for evil, as it shall be properly or improperly directed. In the hands of a company of speculators, who should monopolize it for themselves, it might be the means of enriching the corporation at the expense of the bankruptcy of thousands; and even in the hands of Government alone it might become the means of working vast mischief to the Republic.

"In considering these prospective evils, I would respectfully suggest a remedy which offers itself to my mind. Let the sole right of using the Telegraph belong, in the first place, to the Government, who should grant, for a specified sum or bonus, to any individual or company of individuals who may apply for it, and under such restrictions and regulations as the Government may think proper, the right to lay down a communication between any two points for the purpose of transmitting intelligence, and thus would be promoted a general compet.i.tion. The Government would have a Telegraph of its own, and have its modes of communicating with its own officers and agents, independent of private permission or interference with and interruption to the ordinary transmissions on the private telegraphs. Thus there would be a system of checks and preventives of abuse operating to restrain the action of this otherwise dangerous power within those bounds which will permit only the good and neutralize the evil. Should the Government thus take the Telegraph solely under its own control, the revenue derived from the bonuses alone, it must be plain, will be of vast amount.

"From the enterprising character of our countrymen, shown in the manner in which they carry forward any new project which promises private or public advantage, it is not visionary to suppose that it would not be long ere the whole surface of this country would be channelled for those _nerves_ which are to diffuse, with the speed of thought, a knowledge of all that is occurring throughout the land, making, in fact, one neighborhood of the whole country.

"If the Government is disposed to test this mode of telegraphic communication by enabling me to give it a fair trial for one hundred miles, I will engage to enter into no arrangement to dispose of my rights, as the inventor and patentee for the United States, to any individual or company of individuals, previous to offering it to the Government for such a just and reasonable compensation as shall be mutually agreed upon."

We have seen that Morse was said to be a hundred years ahead of his time as an artist. From the sentences above quoted it would appear that he was far in advance of his contemporaries in some questions of national policy, for the plan outlined by him for the proper governmental control of a great public utility, like the telegraph, it seems to me, should appeal to those who, at the present time, are agitating for that very thing. Had the legislators and the people of 1838 been as wise and clear-headed as the poor artist-inventor, a great leap forward in enlightened statecraft would have been undertaken at a cost inconceivably less than would now be the case. Competent authorities estimate that to purchase the present telegraph lines in this country at their market valuation would cost the Government in the neighborhood of $500,000,000; to parallel them would cost some $25,000,000. The enormous difference in these two sums represents what was foretold by Morse would happen if the telegraph should become a monopoly in the hands of speculators. The history of the telegraph monopoly is too well known to be more than alluded to here, but it is only fair to Morse to state that he had sold all his telegraph stock, and had retired from active partic.i.p.ation in the management of the different companies, long before the system of stock-watering began which has been carried on to the present day.

And for what sum could the Government have kept this great invention under its own control? It is on record that Morse offered, in 1844, after the experimental line between Was.h.i.+ngton and Baltimore had demonstrated that the telegraph was a success, to sell all the rights in his invention to the Government for $100,000, and would have considered himself amply remunerated.

But the legislators and the people of 1838, and even those of 1844, were not wise and far-sighted; they failed utterly to realize what a magnificent opportunity had been offered to them for a mere song; and this in spite of the fact that the few who did glimpse the great future of the telegraph painted it in glowing terms.