AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 HENRY’S CONTRIBUTION 
 
 ALTGELD HALL STACKS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH 
 
 WITH 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF 
 PROF. MORSE’S INVENTION. 
 
 BY WILLIAM B. TAYLOE. 
 
 [FROM THE SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1873.] 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 GOYERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 1879 . 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 By William B. Taylor. 
 
 “ Yet though thy purer spirit did not ueed 
 The vulgar guerdon of a brief renown, 
 
 Some little meed at least — some little meed 
 
 Our age may yield to thy more lasting crown.” 
 
 Iii the impulsive tide of popular applause which follows the consum- 
 mation of great enterprises, or the material advancement from new con- 
 quests of natural law, the labors and merits of those who patiently laid 
 the deep and broad foundations of these successes, or who with rarest 
 diligence, sagacity, and skill, made such successes practicable, are usu- 
 ally whelmed; and — save by the scientific student, are mostly forgotten 
 and ignored. And this result is the more assured by reason of the en- 
 tire self-unconsciousness and devotion with which the higher work of 
 original research is conducted, with no disturbing thought on the part 
 of the investigator, of reaping immediate advantage or reward from the 
 bestowal of the new discovery. 
 
 1 ‘ For praise is bis who builds for liis own age ; 
 
 But be wbo builds for time, must look to time for wage.”* 
 
 That the award of time respecting Henry’s true relation to the tele- 
 graph will be discriminating and just, may be confidently anticipated, 
 since the materials and data for an accurate judgment are already matter 
 of enduring record.! In attempting here to briefly review this record, 
 justice will best be done to Henry’s fame by rendering full justice to 
 Henry’s predecessors. 
 
 The Growth of the Electric Telegraph. — u The electric telegraph had 
 properly speaking, no inventor. It grew up little by little, each inventor 
 adding his little to advance it toward perfection.” i: These words of 
 soberness and truth are little apprehended by the multitude ; who blind 
 alike to the beginnings and to the growths of great ideas, contemn the 
 
 * Prof. Grant Allen. 
 
 tin the spirit of Kepler (though with less of self-assertion), Henry, with a modest esti- 
 mate of bis own contributions to science, while evincing a remarkable indifference to 
 popularity, yet with the quiet confidence of a clear and impartial judgment, declared 
 “ I was content that my published researches should remaiu as material for the his- 
 tory of science, and be pronounced upon according to their true value by the scientific 
 world .” — (Smithsonian Report for 1857, p. 87.) 
 
 i The Electric Telegraph. By Robert Sabine. 8vo. London, 1807, part i, chap, iv 
 sect. 59, p. 40. ’ 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 € 
 
 discoverer while they deify the artisan. When Galvani about a cen- 
 tury ago (1786) first opened slightly the door to one of nature’s mar- 
 vels, that large community ever distinguished by the vigor of its com- 
 mon sense and the practical solidity of its judgment, asked with ready 
 instinct the wise and ancient question, u What is the use of it?” And a 
 majority of those who recognized the experimenter’s appearance on the 
 streets of Bologna, pointed him out as the u frog philosopher.” Their 
 descendants and representatives at the present day have neither lost — 
 nor gained in wit.* * * § 
 
 It is proposed to notice the development of the electric telegraph 
 somewhat at length, in order to exhibit more clearly the precise nature 
 and value of Henry’s contribution to its practical establishment and 
 success. This survey naturally divides itself into a chronological re- 
 view of the successive though overlapping applications — of frictional or 
 mechanical electricity (first suggested by Franklin? or by Lesage? about 
 the middle of the last century) ; f of galvanism or chemical electricity 
 (first suggested by Soemmering in 1808) ; and of galvano-magnetism 
 (first suggested by Ampere in 1820)4 
 
 Among the numerous flights of imagination by which genius has fre- 
 quently anticipated the achievements of her more deliberate and cautious 
 sister — earth- walking reason, none is perhaps more striking than the ro- 
 mantic conception by Famianus Strada, of Borne, in the early part of the 
 seventeenth century, of an intercourse maintained between separated 
 friends by means of two sympathetic magnetic compasses, whereby the 
 indications on the dial given by one, were instantly made visible to the 
 other. § 
 
 * On tlie value of abstract science, see “ Supplement,” Note A. 
 
 t Mr. Stephen Gray, in a letter to Dr. Cromwell Mortimer, secretary of the Royal Soci" 
 ety of London, dated February 8, 1731, recited among numerous electrical experiments, 
 the passage of sparks and the excitation of an electroscope, effected through 293 feet of 
 wire suspended by silk, in 1729; through 666 feet on July 3 of that year; a week or 
 two later, through 765 feet ; and in August, 1730, through 886 feet of wire. (Phil. 
 Trans. E. S. 1731, vol. xxxvii, No. 417, pp. 29, 31, and 44.) These experiments were 
 made however for the purpose of determining conductive capacity, without any view 
 of employing the indications for signals. 
 
 A letter was published in the Scots’ Magazine , dated Renfrew, February- 1, 1753, and 
 signed “ C. M.,” which, under the title “An expeditious method of conveyiug intelli- 
 gence,” proposed the suspension between two distant points of a number of insulated 
 wires (equal to the number of letters in the alphabet), through which electrical dis- 
 charges should separately exhibit themselves by the di verging balls of an electroscope, 
 or the striking of a bell by the attraction of a charged ball. The author of the com- 
 munication was supposed by Sir David Brewster to be a Charles Marshall, of Paisley. 
 ( The Engineer, London, Dec. 24, 1858, vol. vi., p. 484.) It is probable that G. L. Le- 
 sage, of Geneva, entertained the proj ect of an electric telegraph as early as the middle 
 of the last century. It was therefore rather the impulse of an age, than the inspira- 
 tion of an individual. 
 
 tThe application of magneto-electricity, presenting no essential differences from the 
 use of galvano-electricity, (for which it is sometimes substituted,) requires no special 
 notice. Still less noteworthy is the project of thermo-electricity as the motor. 
 
 § Prolusiones Acaclemicce : by F. Strada, quarto, Rome, 1617, lib. ii, prolusio 6. A 
 century later, (but still a third of a century before man dreamed of electric telegraphs,) 
 Joseph Addison presented the following version of this fairy tale: “Strada, in one 
 of his Prolusions, gives an account of a chimerical correspondence between two 
 friends by the help of a certain loadstone which had such a virtue in it that if it 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 7 
 
 “Two faithful needles — from the informing touch 
 Of the same parent stone, together drew 
 Its mystic virtue ; 
 
 And though disjoined hy kingdoms, — though the main 
 Rolled its broad surge betwixt, — and different stars 
 Beheld their wakeful motions, — yet preserved 
 Their former friendship and remembered still 
 The alliance of their birth.” * * 
 
 It needed but the later discovery of the galvanic wire for connecting 
 the two needles, to realize completely this vision of an “oriental” fancy, 
 and to render it the sober experience of our present every-day life. 
 
 I. — TELEGRAPHS BY ELECTRICITY. 
 
 If the earlier attempts commencing in the last century to apply so-called 
 “static” electricity to the purpose of telegraphy may to some appear 
 to possess only an antiquarian interest, it will be seen that they form 
 the necessary, and by no means insignificant, childhood of our modern 
 systems. Neglecting generally mere speculations, as well as initial con- 
 ceptions of executed schemes, the following comprise the more import- 
 ant experimental devices, in the order of their approximate realization. 
 
 1774. The first electric telegraph of which there is record, is that es- 
 tablished at Geneva by Georges -Louis Lesage. The line consisted of 
 24 insulated wires for the alphabet, each terminating in a pith-ball elec- 
 troscope duly lettered, for indicating by its excitement the succession 
 forming the words and sentences given by the operator, who employed 
 at the transmitting station a manual conductor from an electrical ma- 
 chine. t 
 
 1787. M. Lomond, at Paris, had a single brass wire extended from one 
 closed apartment to another at some distance from it, in connection with 
 a pith-ball electroscope at each end, by which arrangement he was able 
 to communicate sentences in either direction. Arthur Young, the dili- 
 gent writer on natural and industrial resources, has thus described the 
 apparatus in his journal: October 16, 1787, — “ In the evening, to Mons. 
 
 touched two several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to move, the 
 other though at never so great a distance, moved at the same time and in the same 
 manner. He tells us that the two friends being each of them possessed of one of these 
 needles, made a kind of dial-plate, inscribing it with the four-and-twenty letters, in 
 the same manner as the hours of the day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. 
 They then fixed one of the needles on each of these plates in such a manner that it 
 could move round without impediment, so as to touch any of the four-and-twenty 
 letters. . . . By this means they talked together across a whole continent, and 
 
 conveyed their thoughts to one another in an instant over cities or mountains, seas 
 or deserts.” ( The Spectator , No. 241, Dec. 6, 1711.) A similar idea (probably borrowed 
 from Strada) is found in Daniel Schwenter’s MathemaUsch-philosophische Erguickungs- 
 stunden ; published at Nuremberg in 1636, pp. 346, 347. 
 
 *Akenside, Pleasures of Imagination (1744), book iii. 
 
 t Lesage, in a letter addressed to Prof. Pierre Pr6vost, of Geneva, dated Berlin, June 
 22, 1782, describing to his friend the details of his telegraph, states that the method of 
 corresponding by means of electricity had been contemplated by him for thirty or 
 thirty-five years. ( TraiU de Telegraphie Plectrigue : par l’Abb6 Moigno, 2d edit. 8vo. 
 Paris, 1852, part ii, chap. 1, p. 59.) 
 
8 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Lomond, a very ingenious and inventive mechanic, who has made an 
 improvement of the jenny for spinning cotton. In electricity he has 
 made a remarkable discovery. You write two or three words on a paper ; 
 he takes it with him into a room, and turns a machine inclosed in a cylin- 
 drical case, at the top of which is an electrometer, — a small fine pith ball ; 
 a wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant 
 apartment ; and his wife by remarking the corresponding motions of 
 the ball, writes down the words they indicate. From which it appears 
 that he has formed an alphabet of motions. As the length of the wire 
 makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be carried on 
 
 at anv distance.” * 
 
 ^ / 
 
 1794. M. Beiser, at Geneva, arranged a line of 36 insulated wires, 
 each separately connected at the receiving-station with a small grat- 
 ing of narrow tin-foil strips pasted on glass, from which a letter or 
 figure had been cut, so as to represent the character by the passage of 
 the electric spark over the series of narrow spaces. O 11 a square plate 
 were fastened 36 of these independent gratings, representing the 26 let- 
 ters and 10 numerals. “The instant the discharge is made through the 
 wire, the spark is seen simultaneously at each of the interruptions or 
 breaks of the tin-foil constituting the letter, and the whole letter is 
 rendered visible at once.” The sparks were transmitted through the 
 selected wire and its corresponding symbol from a small electrical ma- 
 chine kept in operation at the sending station, t 
 
 1795. Tiberius Cavallo, in England, experimented with electric signals 
 of various kinds (explosive and otherwise) through a long and tolerably 
 fine copper wire (about the fortieth of an inch in diameter) insulated by 
 successive coatings of pitch, linen strips, woolen cloth, and oil-painting. 
 He found a Leyden jar of about one square foot, sufficient for the re- 
 quired electric spark, if the length of the wire did not exceed 200 feet. 
 He remarks: “By sending a number of sparks at different inter- 
 vals of time according to a settled plan, any sort of intelligence might 
 be conveyed instantaneously from the place in which the filial is sit- 
 uated. With respect to the greatest distance to which such communi- 
 cation might be extended, I can only say that I never tried the experi- 
 ment with a wire of communication longer than about 250 feet ; but from 
 the results of those experiments, and from the analogy of other facts, I 
 am led to believe that the above-mentioned sort of communication might 
 be extended to two or three miles, and probably to a much greater dis- 
 tance.” X 
 
 * Travels during the years 1787, 1788, and 1789, in the Kingdom of France. By Arthur 
 Young. 2 vols. 8vo. Dublin, 1793, vol. i, p. 135. Of the work as republished in Pink- 
 erton’s Collection of Voyages and Travels , 4to. London, 1809, vol. iv, p. 139. 
 
 t Voigt’s Magazin, etc. 1794, vol. ix, part 1, p. 183; also Moigno’s Telegraphie 
 Jfilectrique, part ii, chap. 1, p. 61. 
 
 \A Complete Treatise on Electricity, in 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1795; vol. iii, note No. 
 viii, pp. 295, 294. The first two volumes of this work had passed through three earlier 
 editions. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 9 
 
 1798. D. F. Salva, in Spain, appears to have successfully worked an 
 electric telegraph through the unprecedented distance of twenty-six 
 miles. “The Madrid Gazette of November 25, 1796, states that the 
 Prince de la Paix, having heard that M. D. F. Salva had read to the 
 Academy of Sciences a memoir upon the application of electricity to tele- 
 graphing, and presented at the same time an electric telegraph of his 
 own invention, desired to examine it,* when being delighted with the 
 promptness and facility with which it worked, he presented it before the 
 king and court, operating it himself. Some useful trials were made and 
 published in Voigt’s Magazine. Two years after, the Infanta Don Anto- 
 nio constructed a telegraph of great extent on a large scale, by which 
 the young prince was informed at night of news in which he was much 
 interested. He also invited and entertained Salva at court. According 
 to Humboldt, a telegraph of this description was established in 1798, 
 from Madrid to Aranjuez, a distance of 26 miles.” # 
 
 1816. Francis Eonalds constructed at Hammersmith, England, an 
 experimental telegraph line of a single wire, operated by an electrical 
 machine, or small Leyden jar. “ He proved the practicability of such a 
 scheme by insulating eight miles of wire on his lawn at Hammersmith. 
 In this case the wire w T as insulated in the air by silk strings. . . . 
 
 Mr. Ronalds fixed a circular brass plate upon the seconds arbor of a 
 clock which beat dead seconds. This plate was divided into twenty 
 equal parts, each division being worked by a figure, a letter, and a pre- 
 paratory sign. The figures were divided into two series of the units, 
 and the letters were arranged alphabetically, omitting J, q, v, w, x, 
 and z. In front of this was fixed another brass jjlate (which could be 
 occasionally turned round by hand), and which had an aperture that 
 would just exhibit one of the figures, letters, and preparatory signs. In 
 front of this plate was suspended a pith-ball electrometer from a wire 
 which was insulated and which communicated on one side with a glass 
 cylinder machine. At the farther end of the wire was an apparatus 
 exactly the same as the one now described, and the clocks were ad- 
 justed to as perfect synchronism as possible. Hence it is manifest that 
 when the wire was charged by the machine at either end, the electro- 
 meters at both ends diverged, and when it was discharged they collapsed 
 at the same instant ; consequently if it was discharged at the moment 
 when a given letter, figure, and sign on the plate appeared through 
 the aperture, the same letter, figure, and sign would appear also at the 
 
 * The Electro-Magnetic Telegraph, by Laurence Turnbull, 8vo. 2d ed. Philada. 1853, 
 pp. 21, 22. Voigt’s Magazin, etc. vol. xi, part 4. The same telegraphic feat is attrib- 
 uted to Betancourt. “ Gauss makes mention of a communication from Humboldt, 
 according to which Betancourt, in 1798, established a communication between Madrid 
 and Aranjuez, a distance of 26 miles, by means of a wire through which a Leyden jar 
 used to be discharged, which was intended to be used as a telegraphic signal.” (Stur- 
 geon’s Annals of Electricity, etc. March, 1839, vol. iii, p. 446.) This is probably a mis- 
 apprehension ; as Augustine Betancourt (more correctly Bethencourt), a Spanish engi- 
 neer, in 1798, devised and exhibited to the National Institute an improvement in the 
 mechanical semaphore. ( Bre wster’s Edin h urgh Encyclopaedia, 1830, art. “Telegraph,’ 
 vol. xviii, p. 535.) 
 
10 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 other clock ; so that by means of such discharges at one station, and 
 by marking down the letters, figures, and signs seen at the other, any 
 required words could be spelt.’ 7 * 
 
 “ He also made the trial with 525 feet of buried wire. With this view he 
 dug a trench four feet deep, in which he laid a trough of wood two inches 
 square, well lined both within and without with pitch ; and within this 
 trough were placed thick glass tubes through which the wire ran. The 
 junction of the glass tubes was surrounded with short and wider tubes of 
 glass, the ends of which were sealed up with soft wax.” This form of 
 conductor was not found to operate very satisfactorily, and the inventor 
 on theoretical grounds did not think such an arrangement adapted to 
 the instantaneous electrical transmission required by his system. 
 
 Mr. Ronalds, in 1823, published a full account of his telegraph, f In 
 1871, very nearly half a century later, as Sir Francis Ronalds, he pub* 
 fished a new edition of this interesting work; and a review of it in 
 u Nature” gives this presentation of the scheme: “Sir Francis, before 
 1823, sent intelligible messages through more than eight miles of wire 
 insulated and suspended in the air. His elementary signal was the di- 
 vergence of the pith-balls of a Canton’s electrometer, produced by the 
 communication of a statical charge to the wire. He used synchronous 
 rotation of lettered dials at each end of the line, and charged the wire 
 at the sending end whenever the letter to be indicated passed an open- 
 ing provided in a cover ; the electrometer at the far end then diverged, 
 and thus informed the receiver of the message which letter was desig- 
 nated by the sender. The dials never stopped, and any slight want of 
 synchronism was corrected by moving the cover.” J 
 
 This very ingenious device of synchronous rotation at the opposite 
 stations presents the earliest example of a dial telegraph, or of a letter 
 indicator employing but a single wire. About forty years later, or in 
 1855, this system was successfully applied by Mr. David E. Hughes, of 
 Kentucky, to a letter -printing telegraph of remarkable rapidity and ac- 
 curacy. § 
 
 1828. “ Harrison Gray Dyar, an American, constructed a telegraph 
 
 in 1827-’28, at the race-course on Long Island, and supported his wires 
 by glass insulators fixed on trees and poles. By means of common elec- 
 tricity acting upon litmus paper he produced a red mark. The difference 
 of time between the sparks indicated different letters arranged in an ar- 
 
 * Encyclopaedia Britannica, 7th ed. 1842, vol. viii, p. 662. — 8tli ed. 1854, vol. viii, p. 627. 
 
 \ Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph ; and some other Electrical Apparatus. By 
 Francis Ronalds. 8vo. London, 1823. 
 
 X Nature. London, Nov. 23, 1871, vol. v, p. 59. 
 
 §A second type of dial telegraph was invented by Prof. Charles Wheatstone in 
 1839, in which the dial (or index) was rotated step by step by means of successive 
 impulses of the current on an electro-magnet, which operated a toothed escapement 
 on the axis of the dial or index ; — the indicated letter or figure being stopped as long 
 as desired. In this case, the character was determined solely by the number of 
 electric impulses transmitted. This system was in 1846, made "the basis of a highly 
 original letter-printing telegraph, by Mr. Royal E. House, of Vermont ; preceding that 
 of Mr. Hughes, as will be observed, nearly ten years. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 11 
 
 bitrary alphabet, and the paper was moved by the hand.” * Mr. Dyar 
 is described by Dr. Luther Y. Bell as “a man of the highest inventive 
 skill and scientific attainments.” His experimental line (of a single wire) 
 was several miles long; and the chemical record of the signals transmitted 
 through it, was by the testimony of those who witnessed its operations, 
 eminently distinct and satisfactory. The following is the account of his 
 enterprise, given by the inventor himself in 1849, some Twenty years after- 
 ward : 
 
 u I invented a plan of a telegraph which should be independent of day 
 nr night or weather, which should extend from town to town or city to 
 city, without any intermediary agency, by means of an insulated wire 
 in the air, suspended on poles, and through which wire I intended to 
 send strokes of electricity in such a manner as that the diverse distances 
 of time separating the divers sparks should represent the different letters 
 of the alphabet and stops between the words, etc. This absolute or this 
 relative difference of time between the several sparks I intended to take 
 off from an electric machine by a little mechanical contrivance regulated 
 by a pendulum, and the sparks were intended to be recorded upon a 
 moving or a revolving sheet of moistened litmus paper, which by the forma- 
 tion of nitric acid by the spark in the air in its passsage through the 
 paper, would leave a red spot for each spark on this blue test-paper. 
 - . . To carry out my invention I associated myself with a Mr. 
 Brown, of Providence, who gave me certain sums of money to become 
 associated with me in the invention. We employed a Mr Connel, of New 
 York, to aid in getting the capital wanted to carry the wires to Phila- 
 delphia. This we considered as accomplished : but before beginning upon 
 the long wire, it was decided that we should try some miles of it on Long 
 Island. Accordingly I obtained some fine card wire, intending to run 
 it several times around the race-course on the Island. We put up this 
 wire (that is, Mr. Brown and myself) at different lengths, in curves and 
 straight lines, by suspending it from stake to stake and tree to tree un- 
 til we concluded that our experiments justified our undertaking to carry 
 it from New York to Philadelphia. At this moment our agent brought 
 a suit or summons against me for 20,000 dollars for agencies and services, 
 which I found was done to extort a concession of a share of the whole 
 project.” Failing in this prosecution, the unprincipled agent obtained 
 a writ against the two partners on a charge of conspiracy to carry on 
 secret communication between the cities ! and he thus effectually put an 
 end to the enterprise, without the formality of a judicial trial on this 
 novel accusation, t 
 
 These practical illustrations of early electric telegraphy, including 
 successful workings of both the dial and the chemical forms of the tele- 
 graph without the use of galvanism, serve to show that the agency is by 
 
 ’ * Turnbull's Electro- Magnetic Telegraph, 8vo. Philadelphia, 1st ed. 1852, p. 6 ; 2d ed. 
 1853, p. 22. 
 
 1 Prescott’s Hist. Electr. Telegraph, 1860, chap, xxi, pp. 427, 423. 
 
12 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 no means the trivial and inefficient one so often represented by modern 
 writers. On the contrary, but for the practical difficulty of perfect and 
 constant insulation, owing to the intense self- repulsion of mechanical 
 electricity and the reaction and retardation from induction currents in 
 png lines of coated wire, this method would really constitute an eco- 
 nomical and satisfactory medium of distant communication. 
 
 Steinheil in reference to this subject remarks : “All these experiments 
 put it beyond a doubt that frictional electricity may be employed for 
 giving signals at any distances, and that when these signals are properly 
 contrived they offer convenient means of telegraphic intercourse. Fric- 
 tional electricity has besides as Gauss has already observed, the great 
 advantage of not losing any of its force by increasing the length of the 
 conducting wire, inasmuch as the whole of the electricity of one coating 
 of the jar must traverse the entire length of the wire (be it what it may) 
 to neutralize that of the other coating.’ 7 * 
 
 II. — TELEGRAPHS BY GALVANISM. 
 
 The introduction of the galvanic battery by Volta at the commence- 
 ment of the i>resent century f led many to experiment with its peculiar 
 current as a means of telegraphing. The only practicable forms of 
 simple galvanic telegraphs, are those whose indications are given by 
 chemical decompositions, and which thus form the class commonly known 
 as the 1 i electro-chemical 77 ; and as these chemical indications usually leave 
 permanent markings, the class is also one of recording telegraphs. 
 
 1808. Dr. Samuel Thomas von Soemmering, of Munich, appears to 
 have been the first to apply Volta’s invention to this purpose. “As long 
 ago as in 1807, Soemmering erected in the apartments of the Academy 
 of Sciences at Munich a galvanic telegraph, of which he has pub. 
 lished a detailed description in the Philosophical Transactions of Ba- 
 varia. [Miinchner DenJcschriften der Konigliehen Akctdemie der Wis - 
 senschaften fur 1809, 1810. Math. phys. Olasse, p. 401.] He em- 
 ployed the energy of a powerful voltaic pile to bring about the 
 decomposition of water by means of thirty-five gold pins immersed in 
 an oblong glass trough.” | Each of these gilt electrodes was in con- 
 nection with one of the thirty-five wires forming the line, and was cov. 
 ered with an inverted test-tube filled with water, resting on a submerged 
 shelf in the oblong trough, as a gas-receiver. These small receivers 
 with their inclosed gilt pins or electrodes arranged in a row, repre- 
 sented 25 letters and 10 numerals. Such being the disposition at the 
 receiving end, the thirty-five line wires at the transmitting end were 
 each secured to a separate perforated brass plate. On connecting the 
 
 * Sturgeon’s Annals of Electricity, etc. March 1839, vol. iii, p. 446. 
 
 t Volta’s description of his battery is given in a “Letter to Sir Joseph Banks,” 
 president of the Royal Society of London. {Phil. Trans. R. S. read June 26, 1800, vol. 
 xc, pp. 403-431.) 
 
 t Sturgeon’s Annals of Electricity, etc. Mur. 1839, vol. iii, p. 447. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 13 
 
 respective poles of the battery with any two of the line wires by means 
 of two attached metallic pins held in the hands and inserted in the 
 holes of their terminal plates, the current was established, and bubbles 
 of hydrogen and oxygen were at once evolved in the corresponding let- 
 tered tubes. A system of syllabic communication and reading was pro- 
 vided, in which the hydrogen element should be first noted.* 
 
 Very shortly after his first successful working of this telegraph, Soem- 
 mering interposed in the galvanic circuit two thousand feet of insulated 
 wire, wound around a glass cylinder, without impairing his decomposi- 
 tions. He found no appreciable retardation in the action of the electrodes. 
 tl The evolution of the gas through this considerable length of wire ap- 
 peared to begin as quickly as if the effect had only to traverse two feet.”f 
 In an u Historical account of the introduction of the galvanic and 
 electro-magnetic telegraph” presented to the Imperial Academy of 
 Sciences at St. Petersburg, by Dr. Hamel, of that city, a very full and 
 interesting narrative is given of Soemmering’s experiments, compiled 
 from original documents $ f from which the following extracts are made : 
 
 u On the 22d of July, 1809, his apparatus was already so far advanced 
 that it was fit to work. He however went on making still further im- 
 provements, and it was only on the 6th of August that he considered 
 the telegraph quite completed. He was much pleased with its perform- 
 ance, being able to work through 724 feet of wire. . . . Two days 
 
 later, he could already telegraph through 1,000 feet, and on the 18th of 
 August through as much as 2,000 feet of wire. On the 29th of August 
 he exhibited the telegraph in action before a meeting of the Academy 
 of Sciences in Munich.” A year later he first effected a satisfactory 
 arrangement of premonitory alarm or attention call. u On the 23d of 
 August, 1810, Scemmering succeeded in inventing a contrivance for 
 sounding an alarm, which answered perfectly well.” (p. 596.) 
 
 “ In September, 1811, Scemmering simplified his telegraph considera- 
 bly $ he reduced the number of wires in his conducting cord from 35 to 
 27. . . . On the 1st of February, 1812, Prince Karl Theodor, the 
 second son of King Maximilian I, honored Scemmering with a visit to 
 see the telegraph. On the 4th of February, 1812, Scemmering announced 
 that he was able to telegraph through 4,000 feet of wire, and on the 15th 
 of March he telegraphed even through 10,000 feet. ” (p. 597.) This was 
 nearly two miles of wire, but wound on reels. 
 
 This complex and inconvenient arrangement of signaling by the de- 
 composition of water, would hardly seem to offer a practical method of 
 telegraphy. Yet the system was earnestly prosecuted by its inventor for 
 
 * SchweiggeEs Journal fiir Chemie und Physilc, 1811, vol. ii, part 2, pp. 217-213: (from 
 the Memoirs of the “ Konigliche Akademie der Wissensehaftenf at Munich, 1810.) Also, 
 Polytechnisches Central- Blatt, June, 1838, Jahrgang iv, b, i, pp. 482-484. 
 
 t Munchner Denlcschriften der Koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften fiir 1812. In this 
 experiment, the self-induction of the conducting coil probably increased somewhat 
 the effect. 
 
 „ t Journal of the Society of Arts, London, July 22, and 29, 1859, vol. vii, No. 348, pp. 
 595-599, and No. 349, pp. 605-610. 
 
14 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 many years, and attracted considerable attention $ and had no simpler 
 device been discovered it might possibly have won its way into use. It 
 is remarkable that some seven or eight years later a Philadelphian inde- 
 pendently proposed the same scheme. 
 
 1816. Dr. John Redman Coxe, of Philadelphia, professor of chemistry 
 in the University of Pennsylvania, suggested the employment of wires 
 for communicating intelligence by a galvanic current, arranged either to 
 decompose water in tubes, (Soemmering’s plan, of which he seems to have 
 been unaware,) or to decompose metallic salts.* As an untried sugges- 
 tion, this has been noticed only because the latter project was afterward 
 succes sfully developed and executed by others. 
 
 1828. Victor Triboaillet de Saint Amand proposed to establish a gal- 
 vanic telegraph line of a single wire from Paris to Brussels, the con- 
 ducting wire to be varnished with shellac, wound with silk, coated with 
 resin, inclosed in sections of glass tube carefully luted with a resin, the 
 whole substantially wrapped and water-proofed, and finally to be buried 
 some feet deep in the earth. The signaling device is somewhat obscure, 
 as while a strong battery is the source of the current, the receiving in- 
 strument is an electrometer.! This project, also belonging to the purely 
 speculative class, scarcely deserves a notice. 
 
 1843. Mr. Robert Smith, of Blackford, Scotland, devised an experi- 
 mental galvano-chemical telegraph carrying out practically the sug- 
 gestion offered by Dr. Coxe in 1816. A set of iron type at the receiving 
 station, each connected by separate wires with a corresponding circuit- 
 key at the transmitting station, was so arranged with reference to a 
 clock-moved band of paper wet with a solution of ferro-cyanide of potas- 
 sium, that when the current was passed through any special circuit, it 
 impressed a blue letter on the band. U A paper containing an account 
 of this telegraph was read before the Boyal Scottish Society of Arts on 
 the 27th of March, 1843 5 reported on by a committee, and approved 
 the 12th of June following. Since that time many trials have been 
 made, and various improvements in its construction have also been 
 introduced by the inventor.” f 
 
 Two or three years later Mr. Smith reduced his line to a single circuit 
 of two wires ; and the registering device at the receiving station con- 
 sisted of a fillet or ribbon of plain calico wound on a roller placed in a 
 trough filled with a solution of ferro-cyanide of potassium containing a 
 few drops of nitric acid, and unrolled by the motion of clock-work over 
 a leaden cylinder with which one of the iron wires of the line was in 
 connection, while the end of the other iron wire rested on the wetted 
 
 ^Thomson’s Annals of Philosophy, Feb. 1816, voL.vii, p. 162. 
 
 t Report of Academy of Industry, Paris. Quoted from A. Vail’s Electro -Magnetic Tele- 
 graph, 1845, p. 135. Also Turnbull’s Electro-Magnetic Telegraph, 2d ed. 1853, p. 56. 
 
 X Practical Mechanic and Engineer's Magazine, Glasgow, Nov. 1845, vol. i, 2d series, 
 p. 36. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 15 
 
 calico immediately over tlie cylinder. On every completion of the cir- 
 cuit at the transmitting station, a blue mark was thus imprinted on the 
 moving cloth by the electrical decomposition, and the succession of 
 marks of differing lengths and intervals formed the system of signals. 
 This telegraph was found to work satisfactorily through eighteen hun- 
 dred yards of wire fence.* 
 
 1846. Mr. Alexander Bain, of Edinburgh, obtained an English patent 
 for a galvano-chemical telegraph, which while exhibiting considerable 
 ingenuity in its mechanical devices, imitated very closely in its chemical 
 record the previous system of Smith. “ The chemical solution preferred 
 for the preparation of the paper consists of sulphuric acid and a solution 
 of prussiate of potassa.” f 
 
 1849. Prof. Samuel E. B. Morse, of New York, obtained an American 
 patent for a galvano-chemical telegraph, also very similar to that of 
 Smith, employing like him a single circuit, and specifying, among sev- 
 eral metallic salts which might be used, solutions of iodide of potassium, 
 of iodide of tin, and of acetate of lead, with nitrate of potassa. The in- 
 ventor added : “I wish it to be understood that I do not confine myself 
 to the use of the substances I have mentioned, but mean to comprehend 
 the use of any known substance already proved to be easily decomposed 
 by the electric current.” f 
 
 III. — TELEGRAPHS BY GAL VANO -MAGNETISM. 
 
 Meanwhile the rapid awakening of attention among physicists to the 
 magnetic relation of the galvanic current, and the production of the gal- 
 vanometer, at once indicated a new and promising method of signaling 
 to a distance by galvanic agency. 
 
 The Galvanometer. — In 1820, Hans Christian Oersted, professor of nat- 
 ural philosophy at Copenhagen, announced through various European 
 journals his discovery that if a straight conjunctive wire through which 
 a galvanic current is passing “be placed horizontally above the mag- 
 netic needle and parallel to it . . . the needle will be moved, and 
 the end next the negative side of the battery will go westward. . . . 
 
 If the uniting wire be placed in a horizontal plane under the magnetic 
 needle all the effects are the same as when it is above the needle, only 
 they are in an opposite direction.” § 
 
 Although the directive influence of a galvanic conductor on a mag- 
 
 * Practical Mechanic and Engineers’ Magazine , June, 1846, vol. i, 2d series, pp. 239, 240. 
 
 t English patent of A. Bain, Dec. 12, 1846, No. 11480. 
 
 X American patent of S. F. B. Morse, May 1, 1849, No. 6420. 
 
 $ Thomson’s Annals of Philosophy, Oct. 1820, vol. xvl, pp. 274,275. (Also, Journal, 
 de Physique, etc. 1820, vol. xci, pp. 72-76 ; Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 1820, vol. 
 xiv, pp. 417-425; Bibliotheque XJniverselle des Sciences, etc. 1820, vol. xiv, pp. 274-284; 
 Annales Gtfne'rales des Sciences Physiques, 1820, vol. v, pp. 259-264; Gilbert’s Annalen 
 der Physik, 1820, vol. lxvi, pp. 295-304; Schweigger’s Journal fiir Chernie und Physik , 
 1820, vol. xxix, pp. 275-281; Giornale Arcadico di Scienze, etc. 1820, vol. viii, pp. 
 174-178; Brugnatelli’s Giornale di Fisica, etc. 1820, pp. 335-342.) 
 
16 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 netic needle, was observed and announced by an Italian savant, Gian 
 Domenico Romagnosi, of Trent, at the beginning of the present cen- 
 tury, (shortly after the production of the galvanic battery by Volta,) 
 this important phenomenon attracted no attention, and produced no re- 
 sults, until it was republished two decades later by the Danish physicist.* 
 
 In the same year — almost immediately after Oersted’s announcement, 
 Prof. Johann S. C. Schweigger, of Halle, made a great improvement on 
 his galvano-magnetic indicator (of a single wire circuit), by giving the 
 insulated wire a number of turns around an elongated frame longitudi- 
 nally inclosing the compass-needle, and by thus multiplying the effect of 
 the galvanic circuits upon the sensibility of the needle converted it into 
 a real measuring instrument, — a u galvanometer.”! 
 
 This delicate indicator at once suggested a new mode of galvanic tele- 
 graphing. In a memoir read to the u Royal Academy of Sciences,” at 
 Paris, October 2, 1820, Andre Marie Ampere, affirming u the possibility 
 of deflecting a magnetic needle at a great distance from the pile, through 
 a very long conducting wire,” remarked : u This experiment, suggested 
 to me by the illustrious Laplace, was completely successful. . . . 
 Prom the success of the experiment ” he added, u it is feasible by means 
 of as many conducting wires and magnetic needles as there are letters, 
 (each letter being assigned to a separate needle,) and by help of a bat- 
 tery at a distance, with its poles alternately connected with the extrem- 
 ities of each conductor, to establish a kind of telegraph adapted to 
 transmit over intervening obstacles whatever information may be de- 
 sired to the person observing the letters of the needles. A set of keys 
 near the battery, bearing corresponding letters and making connection 
 by their depression, would offer a facile means of correspondence ; re- 
 
 *As early as 180*2, eighteen years before Oersted’s discovery, M. Romagnosi, a publi- 
 cist and physicist of Trent, observed the deflection of the magnetic needle when 
 placed near a parallel conductor of the galvanic current. An account of this dis- 
 covery was published in the Gazzetta cli Trento , August 3, 1802. See “Supplement,” 
 Note B. 
 
 t “ Additions to Oersted’s Electro-magnetic Experiments,” a memoir read at the Natur- 
 forsclienden Gesellscliaft at Halle, September 16 and November 4, 1820. An abstract of 
 this paper was published in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung of Halle, (4to,) November, 
 1820, No. 296, vol. iii, col. 1321-624. The full memoir appeared in the Journal fur 
 Chetniennd Pluysik, 1821, vol. xxxi, pp. 1-17; and “Additional Remarks,” etc. by Dr. 
 Schweigger, in the same volume, pp. 35-41. 
 
 A galvanometer of somewhat different form, having a vertical helix and employing 
 an unmagnetized needle, was very shortly afterward independently devised by Johann 
 Christian Poggendorff, of Berlin ; and as he preceded Schweigger in publishing an ac- 
 count of it, he is sometimes regarded as the original inventor. ( Edinburgh Philosophi- 
 cal Journal, July, 1821, vol. v, p. 113.) Schweigger designated his device an “ Electro- 
 magnetic Multiplicator ” ; Poggendorff designated his arrangement a “ Galvano-mag- 
 netic Condensator.” Professor Oersted remarks, “Immediately after the discovery of 
 electro-magnetism, M. Schweigger, professor at Halle, invented an apparatus admirably 
 adapted for exhibiting by means of the magnetic needle, the feeblest electric currents. 
 
 M. Poggendorff, a distinguished young savant of Berlin, constructed an 
 electro-magnetic multiplier very shortly after M. Schweigger, with which he made 
 some striking experiments. M. Poggendorlf’s work having been cited in a book on 
 electro-magnetism by the celebrated M. Ernan, (published immediately after the dis- 
 covery of these phenomena,) became known to several philosophers before that of M. 
 Schweigger.” ( Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 1823, vol. xxii, pp. 358-360.) 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 17 
 
 quiring only the time to touch each key at the one station, and to read 
 each letter at the other.”* 
 
 Ingenious as this early proposal of an electro-magnetic telegraph ap. 
 pears, it really presents essentially hut the substitution of the new-found 
 galvanometer for the old electrometer at the receiving station, as first 
 employed by Lesage, nearly half a century previously. 
 
 1823. The first to develop practically, Ampere’s suggestion of a gal- 
 vanometer telegraph, was the Russian Baron Paul Ludovitscli Schilling, 
 of Cronstadt. The personal friend of Soemmering, he became from an 
 early date warmly interested in the galvanic telegraph 5 and not long 
 after Schweigger’s invention of the galvanometer, he appears to have 
 commenced his experiments in the direction pointed out by Ampere. 
 His countryman, the venerable Hr. Hamel, of St. Petersburg, Avho en- 
 joyed his acquaintance, gave in 1859, in his “ Historical account of the 
 introduction of the galvanic and electro-magnetic Telegraph,” the follow- 
 ing interesting particulars of Schilling’s early associations and pursuits:! 
 
 “At the time when Soemmering became a member of the Academy of 
 Sciences at Munich, in 1805, there was attached to the Russian embassy 
 in that capital, the Baron Pavel Ludovitscli Schilling, of Cronstadt. 
 About a year after the invention of the telegraph [by the former] Schil- 
 ling saw experiments performed with it. He was so iorcibly struck with 
 the probability of a very great usefulness of the invention that from that 
 day galvanism and its applications became one of his favorite studies.” 
 
 “I 11 the spring of 1812, Baron Schilling was endeavoring to contrive 
 a conducting cord sufficiently insulated that it might convey the gal- 
 vanic current not only through wet earth, but also through long dis- 
 tances of water. The war then impending between France and Russia 
 made Baron Schilling desirous of finding a means by which such a con- 
 ducting cord should serve for telegraphic correspondence between for- 
 tified places and the field, and likewise for exploding powder mines 
 across rivers. ... In the autumn of 1812, he actually exploded 
 powder mines across the river Neva, near St. Petersburg. 
 
 Baron Schilling lias told me that during his stay at Paris, he with his 
 subaqueous conductor, several times (to the astonishment of the lookers- 
 on) ignited gunpowder across the river Seine.” 
 
 “On the 29th of December, 1815, there came to pay his respects to 
 Soemmering (while Baron Schilling was just with him) the well-known 
 natural p>liilosoplier Johann Salomon Chistian Scliweigger, then pro- 
 fessor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the Physico-technical In- 
 stitute at Nuremberg, who was on his way to Paris and London : (in which 
 
 * Annales de Chimie etde Physique, 1820, vol. xv, pp. 72, 73. 
 
 1 The writer states: “Letters show that the cordial friendship between Soemmering 
 and Baron Schilling continued unchanged to the time of his decease in 1830.” Schil- 
 ling died August 7, 1837. Dr. Hamel himself had the fortune to he personally ac- 
 quainted with Oersted, Sehweigger, Ampere, Arago, Soemmering, Schilling, and other 
 electro-magnetic and telegraphic celebrities. 
 
 2 E T 
 
18 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH, 
 
 latter place I had afterward the pleasure of making his acquaintance.) 
 
 . . . Baron Schilling having made at Soemmering’s the acquaint- 
 ance of Schweigger, of course could not forsee that one day an invention 
 of this gentleman, the 4 multiplier,’ would enable him to make at St. 
 Petersburg, the first electro-magnetic telegraph.”* 
 
 It is impossible, in the scarcity of documentary evidence, to ascer- 
 tain at what date Schilling’s long contemplated project of a galvan- 
 ometer telegraph (designed as an improvement on the galvanic telegraph 
 of his friend Soemmering) was first reduced to a practical or working 
 form : but it was at least as early as the year 1823, when Schilling con- 
 structed at St. Petersburg an electro-magnetic telegraph apparatus whose 
 signals were produced by five galvanometer needles, each provided with 
 its own independent galvanic circuit. Schilling was enabled to effect 
 his great simplification of an original alphabet of circuits, by the inge- 
 nious expedient of giving to each needle a positive and negative motion by 
 means of reversed currents, and then of combining two or more of these 
 signals. Whether this was really Schilling’s first form of apparatus is 
 very doubtful ; but it is at least certain that he exhibited an operative 
 instrument before the Emperor Alexander in 1824, or in 1825.f 
 Dr. Hamel remarks : 44 It was reserved for Baron Schilling at St. Peters- 
 bnrg to make the first electro-magnetic telegraph. Having become (as 
 we know) through Soemmering, at Munich, passionately fond of the art 
 of telegraphing by means of galvanism, he now used for it the deflection 
 of the needle, which he placed within the 4 multiplier’ of Schweigger 
 horizontally on a light vertical axle hanging on a silken thread, and bear, 
 ing a circular disk of paper colored differently on each side. . . . By 
 
 degrees he simplified the apparatus. Eor a time he used five needles, and 
 at last he was able to signalize even with one single needle and multiplier, 
 producing by a combination of movements in the two directions, all the 
 signs for letters and numbers. Having known Soemmering’s alarum, 
 Schilling invented one for his telegraph also. His success in bringing 
 his instruments to a high state of perfection would have been much 
 more rapid had his time not been so much occupied with various duties, 
 and particularly with tbe founding and directing of a large lithographic 
 establishment for the Russian Government. Baron Schilling’s telegraph 
 was an object of great curiosity at St. Petersburg ; it was frequently 
 exhibited by him to individuals aud to parties. Already the Emperor 
 Alexander I, had been pleased to notice it in its earlier stage, and when 
 it was reduced to great simplicity, his Majesty the Emperor Nicholas 
 honored Baron Schilling on the 13th of March, 1830, with a visit at his 
 lodgings in Opotchinin’s house, in the Konooshennaja, to see experiments 
 performed with it through a great length of conducting wires. . . . 
 
 44 In May of the last-mentioned year (1830) Baron Schilling undertook 
 a journey to China. . . . After his return from the borders of China to 
 
 * Journal of the Society of Arts, July 22, 1859, vol. vii, pp. 597, 598. 
 tThe Emperor Alexande -1 died in 1825. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 19 
 
 St. Petersburg, in March, 1832, Baron Schilling occupied himself again 
 with the telegraph, and in May, 1835, he undertook a journey to the west 
 of Europe, taking his simplified instrument with him. In the month of 
 September he attended the meeting of the German physicists at Bonn 
 on the Rhine, where on the 23d he exhibited his telegraph before the 
 section of natural philosophy and chemistry, over which Professor 
 Georg Wilhelm Muncke, of the University of Heildelberg, presided. 
 Muncke was much pleased with Schilling’s instrument, and he determined 
 at once to get one for exhibition at his lectures. I have lately found at 
 Heidelberg ... in a store-room, the apparatus which Professor 
 Muncke got made in imitation of the one exhibited by Baron Schilling 
 at Bonn.” # 
 
 The conflicting accounts of Schilling’s system given at a later date 
 appear to refer to instruments constructed at different periods. Thus it 
 is said that in the latter part of 1832 [!] he used a “ certain number of 
 platinum wires insulated and united in a cord of silk, which put in action, 
 by the aid of a species of key, 36 magnetic needles, each of which was 
 placed vertically in the center of a multiplier. M. de Schilling was the 
 first who adapted to this kind of apparatus an ingenious mechanism 
 suitable for sounding an alarm, which when the needle was turned at 
 the beginning of the correspondence, was set in play by the fall of a 
 little ball of lead which the magnetic needle caused to fall. This tele- 
 graph of M. de Schilling was received with approbation by the Empe- 
 ror, who desired it established on a larger scale : but the death of the 
 inventor postponed the enterprise indefinitely.” f 
 
 It is also stated in another account, that Schilling exhibited his tele- 
 graphic instruments before the Emperor Alexander. “In order to ap- 
 prise the attendant before the commencement of a telegraphic dispatch, 
 Schilling set off an alarm. How much of his apparatus belongs prop- 
 erly to the Baron Schilling, or whether a part of it was not an imitation 
 of that of Gauss and Weber, is not for the editor to decide; but that 
 Schilling had already experimented (probably with a more imperfect ap- 
 paratus) before the Emperor Alexander, and subsequently before the 
 Emperor Nicholas, is affirmed by the authorities adduced.” The account 
 describes the communications as consisting of signs devised from the 
 various combinations of the right and left deflections of the single nee- 
 
 * Journal of the Society of Arts , July 29, 1859, vol. vii, pp. 608, 607. The apparatus 
 above referred to, is noteworthy as being that seen by Mr. William Fothergill Cooke 
 on attending one of the lectures by Professor Muncke, at Heidelberg, March 6, 1836, 
 on the electro-magnetic telegraph; and which apparatus he proceeded immediately to 
 have reproduced. Returning to London April 22, of the same year, Mr. Cooke, (in con- 
 junction with Professor Wheatstone, ) succeeded by liis energy in introducing the needle 
 telegraph into England : and thus Schilling’s great invention became transplanted from 
 St. Petersburg to Loudon, without either of its English introducers having any idea of 
 its true origin. As Dr. Hamel remarks : “Mr. Cooke, who had never occupied himself 
 with the study either of natural philosophy in general, or of electricity in particular, 
 did not at all get further acquainted with Professor Muncke. He did not even acquire 
 his name properly ; he calls him Moncke. He had no idea that the apparatus he had 
 seen had been contrived by Baron Schilling in Russia.” 
 
 t Report of the “Academy of Industry,” Paris, February, 1839. 
 
20 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 die.* * * § It must evidently have been at a later date than 1825 when 
 Schilling reduced his telegraph line to a single circuit of two wires and 
 employed but a single galvanometer. Whether Schilling or Gauss was 
 the original inventor of that most important improvement in galvanic 
 telegraphy, the simplification and reduction of the line of communication 
 to a single circuit cannot now perhaps be definitely determined;! but 
 that the credit belongs to Schilling seems highly probable. That Schill- 
 ing iirst invented and constructed a practical and operative electro-mag- 
 netic telegraph apparatus is placed beyond dispute; although the his- 
 torical evidences of actual date are somewhat obscure. It is remarkable 
 that although Schilling’s early experimental telegraph was widely ex- 
 hibited, and to numbers of distinguished visitors, no contemporary pub- 
 lication of its character or construction was made; and the invention was 
 unknown to Western Europe for a dozen years later.t 
 
 Thus, in 1829, Gustav Theodor Fechner, of Leipsic, evidently quite un- 
 aware of Schilling’s labors — years before, wrote in a text-book on Gal- 
 vanism : “There is no doubt that if the. insulated wires of twenty-four 
 multipliers, representing the letters of the alphabet (situated in Leipsic, 
 for example), were conducted underground to Dresden, where should 
 be placed a battery, we would have thereby a medium of communica- 
 tion probably not very expensive, through which intelligence could be 
 instantaneously transmitted from one city to another.” § 
 
 And in the year following, 1830, Dr. William Ritchie, at London, in a 
 lecture before the Royal Institution on the evening of February 12, 
 exhibited a working model of a telegraph provided with 26 circuits of 
 wire for the several letters of the alphabet, “Mr. Ritchie concluded by ex- 
 hibiting the electro magnetic telegraph proposed by Ampere, by means 
 of which, rapid communication might be carried on between towns in 
 every state of the weather. The lecturer concluded by observing that 
 in the present state of the inquiry, we cannot pronounce with absolute 
 
 certainty with regard to the success of this ingenious project.” || 
 
 % 
 
 The Electro-Magnet. — But almost simultaneously with the birth of the 
 galvanometer, this fertile agent — electricity — developed anew and no less 
 
 * roly iechnisches Central-Blatt, June, 1838, Jalirgang iv. b. i, p. 486. 
 t One of the foremost of telegraphic inventors, and the personal friend of Gauss, 
 Steinheil himself, speaks thus uncertainly on this subject: “The experiments in- 
 stituted by Schilling by the deflection of a single magnetic needle, seem much better 
 contrived [than Ampere’s plan of an alphabet of wires, adopted by Mr. Davy and 
 others] ; he did not, however, succeed in surmounting the mechanical difficulties that 
 attend the question in this shape . . . Gauss, and probably in imitation of him, 
 
 Schilling . . . made use of but a single wire running to the distant station and 
 
 back.” (Sturgeon’s Annals of Electricity , etc. March, 1839, vol. iii, pp. 448 and 450.) 
 
 fin 1835, Schilling, assisted by Baron Jacquin and Professor Ettingshausen, experi- 
 mented with telegraph wires extended over the houses and across the streets of Vienna, 
 preferring air lines to conductors laid in the earth. In 1837, Schilling ordered at a 
 rope manufactory in St. Petersburg the necessary length of an insulated submarine 
 cable, for the purpose of connecting telegraphically that capital with Cronstadt, 
 through a portion of the Gulf of Finland; the distauce between the two cities being 
 twenty miles. His death which occurred August 7, 1837, arrested the enterprise. 
 
 § Lehrbuck des Galvanismus, etc. by G. F. Fechner, 8vo. Leipzig, 1829, p. 269. 
 
 || The Quarterly Journal of the Roy. Inst, of Gr. Brit. Mar. 1830, vol. xxix, p. 185. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 21 
 
 marvelous progeny. In tlie same year, 1820, Dominique Francois Arago, 
 of Paris, announced, “On repeating the experiments of the Danish 
 physicist, I have observed that the same current will develop strongly 
 in strips of iron or steel, the magnetic power. . . . The conjunctive 
 
 wire communicates to soft iron but a momentary magnetization ; but to 
 small pieces of steel it gives frequently a permanent magnetism. I have 
 been able thus to completely magnetize sewing needles.”* 
 
 This germ of a new power required, as usual, the successive labors of 
 more than one philosophic investigator to develop fully its capacities. 
 To William Sturgeon, of Woolwich, England, belongs the distinguished 
 honor (too little appreciated by his countrymen) of giving to the scien- 
 tific toy of Arago a suitable form, and thus of first producing in 1824, the 
 true electro-magnet with its intermittent control of an armature. Dis- 
 pensing with the glass tube of Arago, Sturgeon constructed a horse-shoe 
 bar of soft iron (after the form of the usual permanent magnet), which he 
 coated with a non-conducting resinous varnish. Then winding a copper 
 wire in a loose coil directly about the limbs of the liorse-shoe, on bring- 
 ing the ends of the wire in connection with the poles of a single galvanic 
 pair of moderate size, he found his temporary magnet capable of sus- 
 taining several pounds by its armature; and on breaking the circuit, 
 becoming instantly powerless. 
 
 It resulted from the correlative function of the galvanic current in 
 directing transversely a permanently magnetized needle (first discovered 
 by Eomagnosi and Oersted), or in inducing temporary magnetism in iron 
 thus transversely placed (first discovered by Arago and Sturgeon), that 
 tWo distinct methods of signaling were offered by this new agency, 
 accordingly as a permanent or a temporary magnet were employed. In 
 the former case, the determined oscillations of the magnetic bar , by 
 means of intermittent currents in a surrounding coil, would form the 
 indicating device; and in the latter case, the determined oscillations of 
 the armature , by means of intermittent currents in the coil surrounding 
 its associated magnet, would give the indication. Hence the two types 
 of electro-magnetic telegraph; the. magnetic-heedle system, and the 
 magnetic- armature system, t 
 
 On experimenting with the galvanometer needle, it was very soon dis- 
 covered that it responded only to variations of surface action in a single 
 pair of galvanic elements, and that a large number of galvanic cells (as 
 in the Cruickshanks battery), having even a greater total surface of oxi- 
 
 * Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 1820, vol. xv, pp. 93, 95, Arago’s method of experi- 
 mentation consisted in winding the wire connecting the poles of the battery, aronnd a 
 glass tube in a loose helix, within which tube small pieces of iron or steel were placed. 
 Sir Humphrey Davy, of England, not long afterward, also magnetized steel-needles 
 by galvanism ; and even effected the result with ordinary electricity from a Leyden-jar 
 battery. {Annals of Philosophy , Angnst, 1821, vol. ii, n. s. pp. 81-88.) This was the 
 germ — though scarcely more than the germ — of the electro-magnet. For a notice of 
 early anticipations of electro-magnetism, see “ Supplement,” Note C. 
 
 t A modification of the latter system, by which the oscillations of an armature are 
 superseded by the variable attraction between the magnetized core and its hollow 
 galvanic coil, might perhaps be considered as forming a third type — that of the 
 “axial” magnet. This has been employed in House’s printing telegraph. 
 
22 
 
 HENEY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 dation, produced but a comparatively small declination of Schweigger’s 
 needle. In fact, no multiplication of galvanic elements was successful 
 in increasing the deflection of a given galvanometer. On the other hand, 
 the same galvanometer was found to have its deflections greatly reduced 
 with every increase in the length of the interposed circuit. And here 
 again an increase of surface in the galvanic pair failed to overcome the 
 increased resistance of a lengthened conductor. There was also an 
 early limit found to the number of turns in the galvanometer coil, which 
 could be efficiently employed with any given surface of oxidizable metal 
 in the single galvanic element. 
 
 In 1824, Peter Barlow, the eminent English mathematician and mag- 
 netician, taking up Ampere’s suggestion, endeavored more fully to test 
 its practicability. He has thus stated the result: “In a very early 
 stage of electro- magnetic experiments, it had been suggested that an 
 instantaneous telegraph might be established by means of conducting 
 wires and compasses. The details of this contrivance are so obvious, 
 and the principle on which it is founded so well understood, that there 
 was only one question which could render the result doubtful ; and this 
 was, is there any dimunition of effect by lengthening the conducting 
 wire ? It has been said that the electric fluid from a common [tin-foil] 
 electrical battery had been transmitted through a wire four miles in 
 length without any sensible diminution of effect, and to every appear- 
 ance instantaneously ; and if this should be found to be the case with 
 the galvanic circuit, then no question could be entertained of the prac- 
 ticability and utility of the suggestion above adverted to. I was there- 
 fore induced to make the trial ; but I found such a sensible diminution 
 with only 200 feet of wire, as at once to convince me of the impractica- 
 bility of the scheme. It led me however to an inquiry as to the cause 
 of this diminution and the laws by which it is governed.” * 
 
 From the rapid reduction of effect observed with increasing lengths of 
 conjunctive wire under the conditions tried, Barlow (from a considerable 
 series of experimental results) was led to believe that the resistance of 
 the conducting wire is approximately proportional to the square root of 
 its length, f 
 
 Notwithstanding therefore Ampere’s “completely successful” experi- 
 ment “ through a very long conducting wire” and Schilling’s later work- 
 ing of his telegraph “through a great length of wires,” (the precise 
 length of the circuit not being stated in either case,) the problem of the 
 electro-magnetic telegraph could hardly be considered as satisfactorily 
 solved for any practical purposes of communicating to great distances. 
 In the deliberate judgment of one of the most eminent of English phys- 
 
 * “ On the laws of electro-magnetic action.” Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, Jan. 
 1825, vol. xii, p. 105. 
 
 tPp. 110, 111 of the Journal just cited. Later experiments under varied conditions 
 have shown that Ohm’s law (announced three years after Barlow’s) of a simple ratio 
 of resistance to length is approximately correct. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 23 
 
 icists in tliis special department, careful experiment only tended to show 
 u the impracticability of the scheme.” 
 
 It is at this point that there appears a new explorer in the electro- 
 magnetic field; a field from which apparently all the laurels had been 
 already gathered. Joseph Henry, elected to the professorship of mathe- 
 matics and natural philosophy in the Albany Academy, of New York, in 
 1826, commenced very shortly afterward his scientific investigations. 
 Sturgeon, in 1824, had pointed out the proper manner of making an 
 “ electro-magnet,” and had also greatly improved lecture-room apparatus 
 for illustrating the torsional reaction between a permanent magnet and 
 a galvanic circuit when either is made movable. By introducing in 
 such cases a larger and more powerful magnet he had succeeded in ex- 
 hibiting the usual phenomena on a larger scale with a considerable re- 
 duction of the battery power.* 
 
 Henry was enabled by his skillful experimental investigations to ex- 
 hibit all the class illustrations attempted by Sturgeon, not only on a 
 still larger and more conspicuous scale, with the use of feeble magnets 
 (where required), but with a still further reduction of the battery power. 
 And he moreover carried out the same results to other cases where an 
 artificial magnet is inapplicable, as for example, in the illustration of 
 Ampere’s fine discovery of the mutual action of two electric currents on 
 each other, or of the influence of the terrestrial magnetism on a current, 
 as in Ampere’s swinging galvanic ring, or the floating ring of De La 
 Rive. These very striking and unexpected results were obtained by the 
 simple expedient of adopting in every case where single circuits had 
 previously been used, the manifold coil of fine wire which Schweigger 
 had employed to increase the sensibility of the galvanometer. 
 
 The coils employed by Henry in the various articles of apparatus thus 
 improved, comprised usually about twenty turns of fine copper wire 
 wound with silk to prevent metallic contact, the whole being closely 
 bound together. To exhibit for instance Ampere’s ingenious and deli- 
 cate experiment showing the directive action of the earth as a magnet 
 on a galvanic current when its conductor is free to move, (usually a small 
 wire frame or ring, of a few inches in diameter, with its extremities dip- 
 ping either into mercury cups or into mercury channels,) the effect was 
 strikingly enhanced by Henry’s method of suspending by a silk thread 
 a large circular coil, 20 inches in diameter, of many wire circuits bound 
 together with ribbon, — the extremities of the wire protruding at the 
 lower part of the hoop, and soldered to a pair of small galvanic plates; — 
 when by simply placing a tumbler of acidulated water beneath, the hoop 
 
 * Transactions of the Society for the encouragement of Arts, etc. 1825, vol. xliii, pp. 38-52. 
 Sturgeon’s battery (of a single element) consisted iC of two fixed hollow concentric cyl- 
 inders of thin copper, having a movable cylinder of zinc placed between them. Its 
 superficial area is only 130 square inches, and it weighs no more than 1 lb. 5 oz.” Mr. 
 Sturgeon was deservedly awarded the silver medal of (lie Society for the Encourage- 
 ment of Arts, Ac. “ for his improved electro-magnetic apparatus.” The same is de- 
 scribed also in the Annals of Philosophy, Nov. 1826, vol. xii, n. s. pp. 357-361. 
 
24 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 at once assumed (after a few oscillations)>its equatorial position transverse 
 to the magnetic meridian. Such was the character of demonstration by 
 which the new Professor was accustomed to make visible to his classes 
 the principles of electro-magnetism. And it is safe to say that in sim- 
 plicity, efficiency, and conspicuous distinctness, such apparatus for the 
 lecture-room was far superior to any of the kind then existing. 
 
 The details of this early contribution to electrical science were set 
 forth in a communication read by Henry before the Albany Institute 
 October 10, 1827, u On some modifications of the electro-magnetic appa- 
 ratus.” In this paper he remarks : 
 
 u Mr. Sturgeon, of Woolwich, who has been perhaps the most success- 
 ful in these improvements, has shown that a strong galvanic power is 
 not essentially necessary even to exhibit the experiments on the largest 
 scale. . . . Mr. Sturgeon’s suite of apparatus, though superior to any 
 other as far as it goes, does not however form a complete set; as indeed 
 it is plain that his principle of strong magnets cannot be introduced 
 into every article required, and particularly into those intended to ex- 
 hibit the action of the earth’s magnetism on a galvanic current, or the 
 operation of two conjunctive wires on each other. To form therefore a 
 set of instruments on a large scale that will illustrate all the facts be- 
 longing to this science, with the least expense of galvanism, evidently 
 requires some additional modification of the apparatus, and particularly 
 in those cases in which powerful magnets cannot be applied. And such 
 a modification appears to me to be obviously pointed out in the con- 
 struction of Professor Schweigger’s galvanic 4 multiplier’; the principles 
 of this instrument being directly applicable to all the experiments in 
 which Mr. Sturgeon’s improvement fails to be useful.”* 
 
 Should any one be disposed to conclude that this simple extension of 
 Schweigger’s multiple coil was unimportant and unmeritorious, the ready 
 answer occurs, that talented and skillful electricians, laboring to attain 
 the result, had for six years failed to make such an extension. Hor was 
 the result by any means made antecedently assured by Schweigger’s 
 success with the galvanometer. If Sturgeon’s improvement of econo- 
 mizing the battery size and consumption, by increasing the magnet 
 factor (in those few cases where available), was well deserving of reward? 
 surely Henry’s improvement of a far greater economy, by increasing 
 the circuit factor (entirely neglected by Sturgeon), deserved a still higher 
 applause. 
 
 In a subsequent communication to Silliman’s Journal, Henry remarks 
 on the results announced in October, 1827 : u Shortly after the publica- 
 tion mentioned, several other applications of the coil, besides those de- 
 scribed in that paper, were made in order to increase the size of electro- 
 magnetic apparatus, and to diminish the necessary galvanic power. The 
 most interesting of these was its application to a development of mag- 
 netism in soft iron, much more extensive than to my knowledge had been 
 
 * Transactions of the Albany Institute, vol. i, pp. 2.2, 23. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 25 
 
 previously effected by a small galvanic element.” And in another later 
 paper, he repeated to the same effect : “ After reading an account of 
 the galvanometer of Schweigger, the idea occurred to me that a much 
 nearer approximation to the theory of Ampere could be attained by in- 
 sulating the conducting- wire itself, instead of the rod to be magnetized ; 
 and by covering the whole surface of the iron with a series of coils in 
 close contact.” 
 
 The electro-magnet figured and described by Sturgeon (in his commu- 
 nication of November, 1825,) consisted of a small bar or stout iron wire 
 bent into a fj or horse-shoe form, having a copper wire wound loosely 
 around it in eighteen turns, with the ends of the wire dipping into mer- 
 cury-cups connected with the respective poles of a battery having 130 
 square inches of active surface. This was undoubtedly the most effi- 
 cient electro-magnet then in existence. 
 
 In June of 1828, Henry exhibited to the Albany Institute a small -sized 
 electro magnet closely wound with silk-covered copper wire about one- 
 thirtieth of an inch in diameter. By thus insulating the conducting 
 wire, instead of the magnetic bar or core, he was enabled to employ a 
 compact coil in close juxtaposition from one end of the horse shoe to the- 
 other, obtaining thereby a much larger number of circuits, and with 
 each circuit more nearly at right angles with the magnetic axis. The 
 lifting power of this magnet is not stated, though it must obviously have 
 been much more powerful than the one described by Sturgeon. 
 
 In March of 1829, Henry exhibited to the Institute a somewhat larger 
 magnet of the same character. “A round piece of iron about one-quar- 
 ter of an inch in diameter was bent into the usual form of a horse- shoe, 
 and instead of losely coiling around it a few feet of wire, as is usually 
 described, it was tightly wound with 35 feet of wire covered with silk, 
 so as to form about 400 turns ; a pair of small galvanic plates which 
 could be dipped into a tumbler of diluted acid, was soldered to the ends 
 of the wire, and the whole mounted on a stand. With these small plates 
 the horseshoe became much more powerfully magnetic than another of 
 the same size and wound in the usual manner, by the application of a 
 battery composed of 28 plates of copper and zinc each 8 inches square. ” 
 In this case the coil was wound upon itself in successive layers. 
 
 To Henry, therefore, belongs the exclusive credit of having first con- 
 structed the magnetic “ spool” or “bobbin,” that form of .coil since 
 universally employed for every application of electro-magnetism, of in 
 duction, or of magneto-electrics. 
 
 In the latter part of 1829, Henry still further increased the magnetic 
 power derived from a single galvanic pair of small size, by a new arrange- 
 ment of the coil. “ It consisted in using several strands of wire each 
 covered with silk, instead of one.” Employing a horse-shoe formed 
 from a cylindrical bar of iron half an inch in diameter and about ten 
 inches long, wound with 30 feet of tolerably fine copper wire, he found 
 
26 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 that with a current from only two and a half square inches of zinc, the 
 magnet held 14 pounds.* Winding upon its arms a second wire of the 
 same length (30 feet) whose ends were similarly joined to the same gal- 
 vanic pair, the magnet lifted 28 pounds. On these results he remarks : 
 
 u These experiments conclusively proved that a great development of 
 magnetism could he effected by a very small galvanic element, and also 
 that the power of the coil was materially increased by multiplying the 
 number of wires, without increasing the length of each. The multi- 
 plication of the wires increases the power in two ways : first, by con- 
 ducting a greater quantity of galvanism, and secondly, by giving it a 
 more proper direction ; for since the action of a galvanic current is di- 
 rectly at right angles to the axis of a magnetic needle, by using sev- 
 eral shorter wires we can wind one on each inch of the length of the 
 bar to be magnetized, so that the magnetism of each inch will be de- 
 veloped by a separate wire. In this way the action of each particular 
 coil becomes directed very nearly at right angles to the axis of the bar, 
 and consequently the effect is the greatest possible. This principle is 
 of much greater importance when large bars are used. The advan- 
 tage of a greater conducting power from using several wires might in a 
 less degree be obtained by substituting for them one large wire of equal 
 sectional area ; but in this case the obliquity of the spiral would be much 
 greater, and consequently the magnetic action less.”f 
 
 But in the following year, 1830, Henry pressed forward his researches 
 to still Ipgher results. Assisted by his friend Dr. Philip Ten-Eyck, he 
 proceeded to test the power of electro-magnetic attraction on a larger 
 scale. “A bar of soft iron 2 inches square and 20 inches long was bent 
 into the form of a horseshoe 9£ inches high; (the sharp edges of the bar 
 were first a little rounded by the hammer;) it weighed 21 pounds. A 
 piece of iron from the same bar, weighing 7 pounds, was filed perfectly 
 flat on one surface for an armature or lifter. The extremities of the 
 legs of the horse-shoe were also truly ground to the surface of the arm- 
 ature. Around this horse-shoe 540 feet of copper bell- wire were wound 
 in nine coils of 60 feet each ;. these coils were not continued around the 
 whole length of the bar, but each strand of wire (according to the prin- 
 ciple before mentioned) occupied about two inches and was coiled sev- 
 eral times backward and forward over itself. The several ends of the 
 wires were left projecting, and all numbered, so that the first and the 
 last end of each strand might be readily distinguished. In this man- 
 ner we formed an experimental magnet on a large scale, with which 
 several combinations of wire could be made by merely uniting the dif- 
 ferent projecting ends. Thus if the second end of the first wire be 
 soldered to the first end of the second wire, and so on through all the 
 series, the whole will form a continued coil of one long wire. By solder- 
 
 * It must not be forgotten that at the time when this experimental magnet was 
 made, the strongest electro-magnet in Europe was that of Sturgeon, capable of sup- 
 porting 9 pounds, with 130 square inches of zinc surface in the battery. 
 
 tSilliman’s Am. Journal of Science, Jan. 1831, vol. xix, p. 402. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 27 
 
 ing different ends, the whole may be formed into a double coil of half 
 the length, or into a triple-coil of one-third the length, &c. The horse- 
 shoe was suspended in a strong rectangular wooden-frame 3 feet 9 
 inches high and 20 inches wide.” 
 
 Two of the wires (one from each extremity of the legs) being joined 
 together by soldering, so as to form a single circuit of 120 feet, with its 
 extreme ends connected with the battery, produced a lifting-power of 
 60 pounds. (Experiment 19.) The same two wires being separately con- 
 nected with the same battery (forming a double circuit of 60 feet each), 
 a lifting-power of 200 pounds was obtained, (Experiment 10,) or more 
 than three times the power of the former case with the same wire. 
 Four wires (two from each extremity of the legs) being separately con- 
 nected with the battery (forming four circuits) gave a lifting-power of 
 500 pounds. (Experiment 12.) Six wires (three from each leg) united in 
 three pairs (forming three circuits of 180 feet each) gave a lifting-power 
 of 290 pounds. (Experiment 18.) The same six wires being separately 
 connected with the battery in six independent circuits, produced a lift- 
 ing-power of 570 pounds, (Experiment 13,) or very nearly double that of 
 the same wires in double-lengths. When all the nine wires were sepa- 
 rately attached to the battery a lifting-power of 650 pounds was evoked. 
 (Experiment 14.) In all these experiments u a small single battery was 
 used, consisting of two concentric copper cylinders, with zinc between 
 them : the whole amount of zinc-surface exposed to the acid from both 
 sides of the zinc was two-fifths of a square foot ; the battery required 
 only half a pint of dilute acid for its submersion.” 
 
 u In order to ascertain the effect of a very small galvanic element on 
 this large quantity of iron, a pair of plates exactly one inch square was 
 attached to all the wires ; the weight lifted was 85 pounds.” (Experi- 
 ment 16.) For the purpose of obtaining the maximum attractive power 
 of this magnet, with its nine independent coils, u a small battery formed 
 with a plate of zinc 12 inches long and 6 wide, and surrounded by cop- 
 per, was substituted for the galvanic element used in the former experi - 
 ments : the weight lifted in this case was 750 pounds.” (Experiment 
 15.)* 
 
 Although not directly connected with the purpose of this exposition, 
 
 * Silliman’s Am. Jour. Sci. same vol. pp. 404, 405. The only European physicist who 
 at this period had obtained any magnetic results even approaching those effected by 
 Henry, was Dr. Gerard Moll (professor of natural philosophy in the University of 
 Utrecht), who having seen in England in 1828 an electro-magnet of Sturgeon’s which 
 supported nine pounds (the very year in which Henry had exhibited a much more 
 powerful magnet before the Albany Institute), “ determined to try the effect of a larger 
 galvanic apparatus” ; and in 1830 remarked, “ I obtained results which appear astonish- 
 ing.” Having formed a horse-shoe about twelve and a half inches in height, of around 
 bar of iron two and a quarter inches in diameter, he surrounded it with about 26 feet 
 of insulated copper wire one-eighth of an inch thick, in a tolerably close coil of 44 
 turns. The weight of the whole was about 26 pounds; and with the current from a 
 galvanic pair of about 11 square feet of zinc surface, the magnet sustained a weight of 
 154 pounds. (Brewster’s Edinburgh Journal of Science , Oct., 1830, vol. iii, n. s. p. 214.) 
 Henry’s magnet less in size and weight, lifted about five times this load, with only 
 one-eleventh of Moll’s battery surface. 
 
28 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 it may be added here that in the following year, 1831, Henry constructed 
 for the laboratory of Yale College a magnet about one foot high from a 
 three inch octagonal bar of iron thirty inches long, which wrapped with 
 twenty-six strands of copper wire and excited by a battery surface of 
 about five square feet, supported 2,300 pounds. Professor Silliman wrote 
 on this occasion, “He has the honor of having constructed by far the 
 most powerful magnets that have ever been known ; and his last, weigh- 
 ing (armature and all) but 82J pounds, sustains/over a ton. It is eight 
 times more powerful than any magnet hitherto known in Europe.”* 
 And Sturgeon (if not the real father, at least the true foster-father, of 
 the electro-magnet), with a generous enthusiasm, remarked : “ Professor 
 Henry has been enabled to produce a magnetic force which totally eclipses 
 every other in the whole annals of magnetism ; and no parallel is to be 
 found since the miraculous suspension of the celebrated oriental impostor 
 in his iron coffin.”! 
 
 But to return to his investigations of 1830, Henry, after finding that 
 the highest attractive power of the magnet was developed by his novel 
 artifice of multiple coils, proceeded to experiment with the simple spool 
 magnet of long continuous single coil; and his researches were rewarded 
 by a new discovery, namely that though the former method of winding 
 the magnet produced the strongest attraction, the latter arrangement 
 (under special conditions) permitted the weaker attractive power to be 
 exercised at a far greater distance; that is tlfrough a much greater 
 length of conducting wire. 
 
 Employing his earlier and smaller magnet of 1829, formed of a quar- 
 ter-inch rod, but wound with about 8 feet of copper wire, he tried the ef- 
 fects of different battery powers, of different length of circuits, and of dif- 
 ferent lengths of coil upon the magnet. Excited with a single pair, “ com- 
 posed of a piece of zinc plate 4 inches by 7, surrounded with copper 7 
 (about 56 square inches of zinc surface), the magnet sustained four and 
 a half pounds. (Experiment 4.) With about 500 feet of insulted copper 
 wire (.045 of an inch in diameter) interposed between the battery and 
 the magnet, its lifting-power was reduced to two ounces; (Experiment 5;) 
 or about 36 times. With double this length of wire (or a little over 1,000 
 feet) interposed, the lifting-power of the magnet was only half an ounce ; 
 (Experiment 4;) thus fully confirming the results obtained by Barlow 
 with the galvanometer ; and showing that the same conditions of en- 
 feebled action with increasing length of circuit applied equally to the 
 magnet. With a small galvanic pair 2 inches square, acting through 
 the same length of wire, (over 1,000 feet,) “the magnetism v r as scarcely 
 observable in the horse-shoe.” (Experiment 3.) 
 
 Employing next a trough battery of 25 pairs, having the same zinc 
 surface as previously, the magnet in direct connection, (which before had 
 supported four and a half pounds,) now lifted but seven ounces; not 
 
 *Silliman’s Am. Jour. Sci. April, 1831, vol. xx, p. 201. 
 t Philosophical Magazine ; and Annals, March, 1832, vol. xi, p. 199. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 29 
 
 quite half a pound. But with the 1,080 feet of copper wire (a little more 
 than one fifth of a mile) suspended several times across the large room 
 of the academy, and placed in the galvanic circuit, the same magnet sus- 
 tained eight ounces : (Experiment 7 :) that is to say, the current from the 
 galvanic trough produced greater magnetic effect through this length 
 of wire, than it did without it. 
 
 “From this experiment it appears that the current from a galvanic 
 trough is capable of producing greater magnetic effect on soft iron after 
 traversing more than one-fifth of a mile of intervening wire than when 
 it passes only through the wire surrounding the magnet. It is possible 
 that the different states of the trough with respect to dryness may have 
 exerted some influence on this remarkable result ; but that the effect of 
 a current from a trough if not increased is but slightly diminished in 
 passing through a long wire is certain.” And after speculating on this 
 new and at the time somewhat paradoxical result, Henry concludes : 
 “ But be this as it may, the fact that the magnetic action of a current 
 from a trough is at least not sensibly diminished by passing through a 
 long wire, is directly applicable to Mr. Barlow’s project of forming an 
 electro-magnetic telegraph f and ]t is also of material consequence in 
 the construction of the galvanic coil. From these experiments it is 
 evident that in forming the coil we may either use one very long wire, 
 or several shorter ones, as the circumstances may require: in the first 
 case, our galvanic combination must consist of a number of plates so as 
 to give ‘projectile’ force; in the second, it must be formed of a single 
 pair.” t 
 
 The importance of this discovery can hardly be overestimated 1 The 
 magnetic “spool” of fine wire, of a length — tens and even hundreds of 
 times that ever before employed for this purpose, — was in itself a gift to 
 science, which really forms an epoch in the history of electro magnetism. 
 It is not too much to say that almost every advancement which has been 
 made in this fruitful branch of physics since the time of Sturgeon’s happy 
 improvement, from the earliest researches of Faraday downward, have 
 been directly indebted to Henry’s magnets. $ By means of the Henry 
 “spool” the magnet almost at a bound was developed from a feeble 
 childhood to a vigorous manhood. And so rapidly and generally was 
 the new form introduced abroad among experimenters, few of whom had 
 ever seen the papers of Henry, that probably very few indeed have been 
 
 * Really Ampere’s project, not Barlow’s. I 11 a subsequent paper Henry corrected 
 this allusion by saying, “I called it ‘Barlow’s project,’ when I ought to have stated 
 that Mr. Barlow’s investigation merely tended to disprove the possibility of a 
 telegraph.” 
 
 tSillimau’s Am. Jour. Sci. Jan. 1831, vol. xix, pp. 403,404. 
 
 + Both forms of the Henry magnet have found valuable applications in science. In 
 Faraday’s lirst electrical investigations, in the latter part of 1831, lie acknowledged 
 the merit of Henry’s magnets, and in constructing his duplex helices for observing 
 the phenomena of induction, he adopted Henry’s method of winding 12 coils of copper 
 wire each 27 feet long, one upon the other. ( Philosophical Transactions of the Jioyal 
 Society , November 24, 1831, vol. cxxii [for 1832], j>I>. 126 and 138. And Faraday’s Ex- 
 perimental llesearches, etc. vol. i, art. 6, p. 2, and art. 57, p. 15.) 
 
30 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 aware to wliom tliey were really indebted for this familiar and powerful 
 instrumentality. But the historic fact remains, that prior to Henry’s 
 experiments in 1829, no one on either hemisphere had ever thought of 
 winding the limbs of an electro-magnet on the principle of the “ bobbin,” 
 and not till after the publication of Henry’s method in January of 1831, 
 was it ever employed by any European physicist.* * * § 
 
 But in addition to this large gift to science, Henry (as we have seen) 
 has the pre-eminent claim to popular gratitude of having first practi- 
 cally worked out the differing functions of two entirely different kinds 
 of electro-magnet : the one surrounded with numerous coils of no great 
 length, designated by him the “ quantity” magnet, the other sur- 
 rounded with a continuous coil of very great length, designated by 
 him the “intensity” magnet. t The former and more powerful system, 
 least affected by an “intensity” battery of many pairs, was shown to 
 be most responsive to a single galvanic element : the latter and feebler 
 system, least influenced by a single pair, was shown to be most excited 
 by a battery of numerous elements ; but at the same time was shown to 
 have the singular capability (never before suspected nor imagined) of 
 subtile excitation from a distant source. Here for the first time is ex- 
 perimentally established the important principle that there must be a 
 proportion between the aggregate internal resistance of the battery and 
 the whole external resistance of the conjunctive wire or conducting 
 circuit; with the very important practical consequence, that by com- 
 bining with an “intensity” magnet of a single extended fine coil an 
 “ intensity” battery of many small pairs, its electro-motive force enables 
 a very long conductor to be employed without sensible diminution of the 
 effect. | This was a very important though unconscious experimental 
 confirmation of the mathematical theory of Ohm, embodied in his for- 
 mula expressing the relation between electric flow and electric resist- 
 ance, which though propounded two or three years previously, failed 
 for a long time to attract any attention from the scientific wortci. § 
 
 * Henry’s “spool” magnet appears to have been introduced into France by Pouillet 
 in 183,/. See “Supplement,” Note D. 
 
 f “ In describing the results of my experiments the terms ‘intensity’ and 1 quantity ’ 
 magnets were introduced to avoid circumlocution, and were intended to be used merely 
 in a techuical sense. By the intensity magnet I designated a piece of soft iron so sur- 
 rounded with wire that its magnetic power could be called into operation by an ‘ in- 
 tensity’ battery ; and by a quantity magnet, a piece of iron so snrrounded by a number 
 of separate coils that its magnetism could be fully developed by a 1 quantity ’ battery.” 
 ( Smithsonian Report for 1857, p. 103. ) These terms though generally discarded by recent 
 writers, are still very convenient designations of the two classes of action, both in the 
 battery and in the magnet. 
 
 \ Beyond a certain maximum length, there is of course a decrease of power for each 
 differing coil of the “intensity” magnet, proportioned to the increased resistance of 
 a long conductor ; but the magnetizing effect has not been found to be diminished in 
 the ratio of its length. In a very long wire, the magnetizing influence (with a suit- 
 able “intensity” battery) appears to, be inversely proportioned to the square of the 
 length of the conductor. 
 
 § Georg Simon Ohm, professor in physics at Munich, published at Berlin, in 1827, 
 his “Galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet:” and in the following year, he 
 published a supplementary paper entitled “ Nachtrage zu seiner mathematischen 
 Bearbeitung der galvanisclien Kette ; ” in Kastner’s Archie fur gesammte Naturlehre : 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 31 
 
 Never let it be forgotten that lie who first exalted the “ quantity” 
 magnet of Sturgeon from a power of twenty pounds to a power of twenty 
 hundred pounds, was the absolute creator of the “ intensity ” mag- 
 net; that magnet which alone is able to act at a great distance from its 
 exciting battery ; — that magnet which by very reason of its lower 
 u quantity ” is alone applicable to the uses of telegraphy. 
 
 As Professor Daniell has concisely stated the problem: “ Electro- 
 magnets of the greatest power, even when the most energetic batteries 
 are employed, utterly cease to act when they are connected by consider- 
 able lengths of wire with the battery.”* * 
 
 Seven years after Henry’s first experimental demonstration of this 
 unlooked-for result, and his complete establishment of the conditions 
 required for magnetizing iron at great distances through very long con- 
 ducting wires, Prof. Charles Wheatstone, of King’s College, London, 
 having found a difficulty in signaling through four miles of wire, was 
 enabled to work out the problem for his own telegraph, by help derived 
 from Henry’s labors. And yet he permitted his colleague, Prof. John 
 F. Daniell, of King’s College, to prefix to the passage above quoted 
 from the excellent treatise on “ Chemical Philosophy,” the remarkable 
 statement: “ Ingenious as Professor Wheatstone’s contrivances are, they 
 would have been of no avail for telegraphic purposes without the in- 
 vestigation, which he was the first to make , of the laws of electro-magnets, 
 when acted on through great lengths of wire.” And this erroneous 
 declaration was published long after Henry’s “quantity” and “ intensity” 
 magnets had been employed in the experiments of European elec- 
 tricians; and years after Professor Wheatstone himself had formed the 
 acquaintance of Henry, and in April, 1837, had learned from his own 
 lips an account of his elaborate investigations and successful results.! 
 
 Whether Baron Schilling ever experimented on a sufficient length of 
 circuit to encounter the fundamental practical difficulty announced by 
 Barlow in 1825 does not appear ; but that formidable obstacle to the 
 actual extension of his enterprise, certainly existed until the year 1831, 
 when Henry announced that the principles demonstrated by his re- 
 searches in 1829 and 1830, were “directly applicable to the project of 
 forming an electro-magnetic telegraph.” And while these principles 
 
 (8vo. Niimberg :) 1828, vol. xiv, pp. 475-493. Fourteen years after the publication of 
 the former memoir, this elaborate discussion was for the first time translated into 
 English, by Mr. William Francis. (“The Galvanic Circuit investigated mathemat- 
 ically.” Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs , etc. London, 1841, vol. ii, pp. 401-506.) 
 
 * Introduction to the Study of Chemical Philosophy, second edition, 8vo. London r 
 1843, chap, xvi, sect. 859, p. 576. 
 
 t Smithsonian Report for 1857, pp. Ill, 112. The following pertinent extract is 
 made from an excellent .and appreciative memoir of the “Life and Work of Joseph 
 Henry,” recently read at the annual session of the American Electrical Society, at 
 Chicago, 111., December 12, 1878, by one of its vice-presidents, Mr. Frank L. Pope : “ In 
 1856, referring again to these experiments, Wheatstone writes : 1 With this law and its 
 applications, no persons in England, who had before occupied themselves with experi- 
 ments relating to electric telegraphs, had been acquainted.’ ... It would seem 
 from the peculiar wording of Wheatstone’s statement last quoted, that he must then 
 have been aware of Henry’s priority in this respect, and had his experiments in mind, 
 at the time of writing it.” ( Journal of the Am. Electrical Society, vol. ii, pp. 135, 136.) 
 This subject is more fully considered in the “ Supplement,” Note F. 
 
32 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 underlie all subsequent applications of the intermittent magnet, they 
 form indeed the indispensable basis of every form of the electro-mag- 
 netic telegraph since invented. They settled satisfactorily (in Barlow’s 
 idirase) the u only question which could render the result doubtful”; and 
 though derived from the magnet, were obviously as applicable to the 
 galvanometer needle.* 
 
 It is idle to say in disparagement of these successes, that in the 
 competitive race of numerous distinguished investigators in the field, 
 diligently searching into the conditions of the new-found agency, the 
 same results would sooner or later have been reached by others. For 
 of what discovery or invention may not the same be said? Only those 
 who have sought in the twilight of uncertainty, can appreciate the vast 
 economy of effort by prompt directions to the path from one who has 
 gained an advance. Not for what might be, but for the actual bestowal, 
 does he who first grasps a valuable truth merit the return of at least a 
 grateful recognition. 
 
 1 831. As an experimental demonstration of the telegraph — now made 
 possible, Joseph Henry, early in the year 1831, suspended around the 
 walls of one of the upper rooms in the Albany Academy, a mile of cop- 
 per bell- wire interposed in a circuit between a small Cruickshanks bat- 
 tery and an u intensity” magnet. A narrow steel rod (a permanent 
 magnet) pivoted to swing horizontally like the compass needle, was ar- 
 ranged so that one end remained in contact with a limb of the soft iron 
 core, while near the opposite end of the compass rod a small stationary 
 office-bell was placed. At each excitation of the electro -magnet, the 
 compass rod or needle was repelled from one limb (by its similar mag- 
 netism) and attracted by the other limb, so that its free end tapped the 
 bell. On reversing the current, the compass rod moved back to the op- 
 posite limb of the electro magnet. This simple device the Professor was 
 accustomed to exhibit to his classes at the academy, during the years 
 1831 and 1832, in illustration of the facility of transmitting signals, to a 
 distance by the prompt action of electro-magnetism, f 
 
 This memorable experimental telegraphic arrangement involved three 
 very significant and important novelties. In the first place, it was the 
 first electro magnetic telegraph employing an u intensity” magnet ca- 
 
 * Wlien urged by a zealous friend to secure an early patent on thes6 valuable and 
 pregnant improvements, Henry resolutely withstood every importunity, seeming to 
 feel that a discoverer’s position and aptitude are lowered by courting self-aggrandize- 
 ment from scientific truth ; a self-denying generosity which characterized him through- 
 out his life. While such disinterestedness cannot fail to excite our admiration, it may 
 perhaps be questioned whether in this case it did not, from a practical point of view, 
 amount to an over-fastidiousness ; whether such legal establishment of ownership, 
 shielding the possessor from the occasional depreciations of the envious, and securing 
 by its more tangible remunerations the leisure and the means for more extended re- 
 searches, would not have been to science more than a compensation for the supposed 
 sacrifice of dignity by the philosopher. Since the date of the American patents of 
 Wheatstone and of Morse (ten years later) several himdred patents have been granted 
 in this country for ingenious improvements upon or modifications of the electro-mag- 
 netic telegraph, all of them necessarily dependent on Henry’s original invention. 
 
 tFor the testimonials of a few surviving eye-witnesses to the practical working of 
 Henry’s experimental line in 1831, and 1832, see u Supplement,” Note E. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 33 
 
 pable of being excited at very great distances from a suitable u intensity ” 
 battery. And there can be no doubt that a similar combination of u in- 
 tensity” battery, with a very long coil galvanometer (such as had pre- 
 viously been found inoperative), was alone wanting to have rendered the 
 early telegraph of Schilling a popular and commercial success. 
 
 In the second place, this experimental arrangement of Henry was the 
 first electro-magnetic telegraph employing the armature as the signaling 
 device; or employing the attractive power of the intermittent magnet, as 
 distinguished from the directive action of the galvanic circuit. That is 
 to say, it was strictly speaking the first u magnetic telegraph.” 
 
 In the third place, it was the first acoustic electro-magnetic telegraph. 
 One practical inconvenience of the u needle ” astern has been found to 
 be the perfect silence of its indications ; and hence in almost every case 
 a call-alarm has been required to insure attention to its messages. In 
 this respect the intermittent magnet presents the advantage, not merely 
 of a greater mechanical power from the same galvanic current, and thus 
 of a better adaptation for striking a bell at a distance, but of being in 
 itself an audible sounder by the mere impacts of its armature.* 
 
 It is suggestive to consider for a moment how different would have 
 been the popular estimate of Henry’s labors, (and especially the practi- 
 cal estimation of subsequent patentees), if the modest discoverer and in- 
 ventor had been u worldly-wise ” enough to secure an early patent on 
 these three indisputably original and most pregnant features of teleg- 
 raphy : — to contest which no rival has ever appeared.! 
 
 In 1832, Henry was elected to the chair of natural philosophy in the 
 college of New Jersey, at Princeton. In 1834, he constructed for the 
 laboratory of this college an original and ingenious form of galvanic bat- 
 tery, comprising eighty-eiglit elements, (each having an active zinc sur- 
 face of one and a half square feet,) of which any u umber, from a single 
 pair upward, could be brought into action ; while by means of adjustable 
 
 * It may be incidentally mentioned that early in 1831, after the satisfactory opera- 
 tion of the first telegraphic magnet, Henry contrived the first Electro-magnetic Engine, 
 comprising an oscillating horizontal electro-magnetic bar, just below each end of which 
 was secured an upright permanent magnet, the two having similhr poles. The polar- 
 ity of the oscillating electro-magnet was reversed at the moment of attractive contact, 
 by automatically inverting the circuit current, and thus each of its poles was alter- 
 nately attracted and repelled by its neighboring magnet. (Silliman’s Am. Journal of 
 Science, July, 1831, vol. xx, pp. 340-343.) Henry was therefore the original inventor 
 of the automatic pole-changer or commutator, — a device having a very wide range of 
 useful application. The illustrious English physicist, James P. Joule, in his “His- 
 torical Sketch of the rise and progress of Electro-magnetic Engines for propelling 
 machinery,” remarks : “The improved plan by Professor Henry of raising the magnetic 
 action of soft iron, developed new and inexhaustible sources of force which appeared 
 easily and extensively available as a mechanical agent ; and it is to the ingenious 
 American philosopher, that we are indebted for the first form of a working model of 
 an engine upon the principle of reciprocating polarity of soft iron by electro-dynamic 
 agency.” (Sturgeon’s Annals of Electricity, etc. March, 1839, vol. iii, p. 430.) 
 
 t A quarter of a century afterward Henry could proudly say, “ I have sought no pat- 
 ent for inventions, and solicited no remuneration for my labors, but have freely given 
 their results to the world ; expecting only in return to enjoy the consciousness of hav- 
 ing added by my investigations to the sum of human knowledge, and to receive the 
 credit to which they might justly entitle me.” ( Smithsonian Report for 1857, p. 86.) 
 
 3 E T 
 
34 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 conductors, all the positive elements could be associated together, as 
 also all the negative ones, so as to form virtually a single pair having 132 
 square feet of zinc surface, or any smaller area desired. In this manner 
 the apparatus could readily be transformed into a “quantity” battery, 
 or an “intensity” battery, at pleasure. In the same year he constructed 
 for the laboratory a powerful “quantity” magnet, surpassing his Yale 
 College magnet; its lifting power, with a battery not exceeding one 
 cubic foot in bulk, being 3,500 pounds. In the following year, 1835, he 
 extended wires across the front campus of the college grounds, from the 
 upper story of the library building to the philosophical hall on the op- 
 posite side, through which magnetic signals were occasionally sent, dis- 
 tinguished by the number of taps on the bell, as first exhibited by him 
 four or five years earlier in the hall of the Albany Academy. Although 
 Henry had established the fact (contrary to all the antecedent expecta- 
 tion of physicists) that the most powerful form of magnet — the “quan- 
 tity” magnet — is not the form best adapted to distant action through an 
 extended circuit, the ingenious idea occurred to him that he could easily 
 combine such a system with the feebler “intensity” system, so as to 
 pro luce powerful mechanical action at almost any required distance. It 
 was simply necessary to apply to the oscillating armature of the distant 
 “intensity” magnet a suitable prolongation so arranged as to open and 
 close the short circuit of the adjoining “quantity” magnet of any avail- 
 able power. It was with his Princeton telegraph line, and its compar- 
 atively feeble magnet, <that he undertook the experiment of breaking by 
 the mere lift of a small wire from a mercury thimble the “ quantity” cir- 
 cuit of his monster magnet, and thus causing its heavy load to fall : — a 
 force scarcely safe if exerted through any sensible distance. He thus 
 fully illustrated the practicability of calling into action at a great 
 distance a power capable of producing the most energetic mechanical 
 effects.* 
 
 1833. Ten years after the experimental telegraph of Schilling, Pro- 
 fessors Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Wilhelm Edward Weber constructed 
 at Gottingen a galvanometer telegraph of single circuit from the Cabinet 
 of Natural Philosophy to the Observatory, a distance of about a mile and 
 a half. The two naked wires after the method of Weber were carried 
 over the houses and steeples ot Gottingen, being supported by insula- 
 tors. The battery power being small, the receiving apparatus consisted 
 of a “multiplier” containing a very great length of fine silvered copper 
 wire; and the magnetic bar suspended by a silk thread carried on tire 
 axis of suspension a small mirror, whose minute deflections were observed 
 at the distance of ten or twelve feet through a telescope.! The tele - 
 
 * Smithsonian Report for 1857, pp. 108, 112. 
 
 tTliis appears to be one of the first employments of a reflecting galvanometer, an 
 instrument which in the hands of Sir William Thomson has been brought to an ex- 
 treme degree of sensibility, and has rendered ocean telegraphy possible. As early as 
 1826, however, Prof. Christian J. Poggendorff applied the reflector to the magnetic! 
 needle for accurately determining minute variations in its horizontal declination. 
 (Pogg. Annalen der Phys. und Chem. 1826, vol. vii. pp. 121-130.) 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 35 
 
 graph was first worked by a galvanic current from a battery, and after- 
 ward for convenience by the secondary current from a magneto-electric 
 apparatus; to which Gauss adapted an arrangement of commutator, 
 whereby the direction of the induced current could be instantly reversed 
 by a touch of the finger. The alphabet of signs was made up of differ- 
 ing combinations of right and left deflections of the needle. Weber ap- 
 plied to the signaling device a delicate apparatus for setting off a clock 
 alarm.* 
 
 183G. Prof. C. A. Steinheil, of Miinicli, at the request of Gauss, (who 
 was absorbed in more abstract researches on magnetism,) in 1834, under- 
 took to develop and improve his arrangement ; and in 1836 had construct- 
 ed a similar * galvanometer telegraph line between Munich and Bogen- 
 hausen, a distance of about two miles, t Employing a greater power he 
 arranged at the receiving station the magnetic bar or double bars of the 
 galvanometer with a larger sweep, so that two bells of differing tones 
 should be struck thereby ; and he thus produced an acoustic telegraph 
 (five years later than Henry’s), capable of audible language, and dis- 
 pensing with the occasion for any call-alarm. To the adjacent ends of 
 the two magnetic bars having opposite polarities, but oscillating within 
 the same coil, he applied fountain pens or marking-points so as to make 
 permanent alternating dots on a fillet of paper carried under them by 
 the regular movement of clock-work, in the manner long familiarly em- 
 ployed in self-registering meteorological and other instruments. Al- 
 though Dyar, on Long Island, had devised a chemical register as early 
 as 1828, and had partly executed it by a successful trial, this double 
 magnet of Steinheil appears to constitute the earliest operative applica- 
 tion of an automatic record to the electric, or to the electro-magnptic, 
 telegraph. Steinheil also improved somewhat on the alphabet of Gauss, 
 though adopting substantially the same system.^ 
 
 In thfe following year, 1837, he made another most important improve- 
 ment in practical telegraphy, by the unexfiected discovery that even the 
 single circuit of a to and fro line could be further simplified by the 
 suppression and economy of one-half of its wire.§ ^ 
 
 * Grottingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, Aug. 9, 1834, part ii, No. 128, pp. 1272, 1273. And 
 Folytechnisches Central- Blatt, June, 1838, Jahrgang iv, No. 31, pp. 487-493. 
 
 t According to Dr. Hamel of St. Petersburg, in the early part of July, 1837, “Stein- 
 lieil, at Munich, had completed the cpnnection of his house in the Lerchenstrasse with 
 the building of the Academy of Sciences, and with the Royal Observatory at Bogen- 
 hausen, by means of 36,000 feet of wire for conducting the current both ways, the 
 wires being suspended in the air.” ( Journal of Society of Arts, July 29, 1859, vol. vii, 
 p. 609.) 
 
 - t Steinheil remarks: “As long as the intervals between the separate signs remain 
 equal, they are to be taken together as a connected group, whether they be pauses be- 
 tween the tones, or intervals between the dots marked down. A longer pause separ- 
 ates these groups distinctly from each other. We are thus enable I, by appropriately 
 selected groups thus’ combined, to form systems representing the letters of the alpha- 
 bet, or stenographic characters, aud thereby to repeat and render permanent at all 
 parts of the chain where an apparatus like that above described is inserted, any in- 
 formation that we transmit. The alphabet that I have chosen represents the letters 
 that occur the oftenest in German by the simplest signs.” (Sturgeon’s Annals of Elec- 
 tricity, etc. April, 1839, vol. iii, p. 520.) 
 
 §“In 1837 Professor Steinheil operated a telegraph line between Munich and Bogen- 
 
36 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 11 Quite recently I made the discovery that the ground may be em- 
 ployed as one-half of the connecting chain. As in the case of frictional 
 electricity, water or the ground may with the galvanic current form a 
 portion of the connecting wire. Owing to the low conducting power of 
 these bodies compared with metals, it is necessary that at the two places 
 where the metal conductor is in connection with the semi-conductor, the 
 former should present very large surfaces of contact. Taking water for 
 instance to conduct two million times worse than copper, a surface of 
 water proportional to this must be brought in contact with the copper, 
 to enable the galvanic current to meet with equal resistance in equal 
 distances of water and of metal ; for instance, if the section of a copper 
 wire is one-half of a square line, it will require a copper plate of 61 square 
 feet of surface in order to conduct the galvanic current 'through the 
 ground as the wire in question would conduct it : but as the thickness 
 of the metal is quite immaterial in this case, it will be always within 
 our reach to get the requisite surfaces of contact at no great expense. 
 Not only do we by this means save half the conducting wire, but we can 
 even reduce the resistance of the ground below what that of the wire 
 would be, as has been fully established by experiments made here with 
 the experimental telegraph.”* 
 
 In his account of these valuable contributions to both the science and 
 the art of electric telegraphy, Steinheil modestly assigns to his immedi- 
 ate predecessors the credit of the most important advancements in the 
 system. He says: “To Gauss and Weber is due the merit of having, in 
 1833, actually constructed the first simplified galvano-magnetic telegraph. 
 It was Gauss who first employed the excitement of induction [magneto- 
 electricity], and who demonstrated that the appropriate combination of a 
 limited number of signs is all that is required for the transmission of 
 communication. f Weber’s discovery that a copper wire 7,460 feet long, 
 which he had led across the houses and steeples at Gottingen, from the 
 Observatory to the Cabinet of Natural Philosophy, required no special 
 insulation, was one of great importance. The principle was thereby at 
 once established of bringing the galvanic telegraph to the most conven- 
 ient form. In accordance with the principles we have laid down, all that 
 was required in addition to this was to render the signals audible ; a task 
 that apparently presented no very particular difficulty, inasmuch as in 
 the very scheme itself a mechanical motion — namely the deflection of a 
 
 hausen, in Germany, using iron wire conductors, and the earth for a return circuit. 
 This discovery was published in 1837, in German, and translated into English by 
 Julian Guggsworth, November ‘24, 1838.” (Prescott’s Hist. Electr. Telegraph. 1860, chap, 
 xxi, p. 405.) An account of SteinheiPs telegraph was read before the French Academy 
 of Sciences, September 10, 1838. ( Comptes Rendus , vol. vii, pp. 590-593.) 
 
 * SteinheiPs paper “On Telegraphic Communication : ” translated from the German, 
 November *24, 1838, by Julian Guggsworth. Sturgeon’s Annals of Electricity, etc. 
 April, 1839, vol. iii, p. 512. A full description of SteinheiPs telegraph is given m Dr. 
 Julius Dub’s Anwendting des EJektromagnetismus, Berlin, 1883; 2d edition, 1873, sect, v, 
 pp. 339-347. 
 
 t These statements do not however do justice to Schilling’s much earlier “simpli- 
 fied galvano-magnetic telegraph,” with which Steinheil was very imperfectly ac- 
 quainted. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 37 
 
 magnetic bar — was given. All that we had to do therefore was to 
 contrive that this motion should be made available for striking bells or 
 for marking indelible dots. This falls within the province of mechan- 
 ics, and there are therefore more ways than one of solving the prob- 
 lem. Hence the alterations that I have made in the telegraph of 
 Gauss, and by which it has assumed its present form, may be said to 
 be founded on my perception and improvement of its imperfections, in 
 harmony with what I had previously laid down as necessary for perfect 
 telegraphic communication. I by no means however look on the arrange- 
 ment I have selected as complete; but as it answers the purpose I had 
 in view, it may be well to abide by it till some simpler arrangement is 
 contrived.”* To SteinlieiPs lasting honor be it said, that when some 
 dozen years later a a simpler arrangement” of the. receiving instrument 
 was brought to his attention, he was the first to appreciate it and to 
 urge upon the Bavarian Government its adoption, to the abandonment 
 of a portion of his own beautiful system. An example of magnanimity, 
 or more properly of intellectual and unbiased judgment, much rarer 
 with inventors of practical improvements in art, than with discoverers 
 of truth in science. 
 
 These later developments of the telegraph, though in public use at 
 the dates specified, not having been generally described by their authors 
 immediately for publication, were from the meager notices of them found 
 in the foreign journals, but little known in this country for several years 
 afterward; and hence naturally arose the strong patriotic impression 
 with many that the electro-magnetic telegraph was essentially an Amer- 
 ican invention. 
 
 About the same time that Steinheil in Munich was engaged in im- 
 proving the needle telegraph, a distinguished chemical philosopher of 
 London, was developing the galvanic battery; and he succeeded in 
 giving that important apparatus a uniformity and continuity of action 
 previously unhoped for. In the adopted forms of the Voltaic battery 
 as arranged by Cruickshanks and others, the oxygen liberated by the 
 active zinc surface rapidly attacked the plate, forming a coating of oxide 
 over it which soon greatly impaired its chemical and galvanic efficiency. 
 On the other hand, the hydrogen liberated at the surface of the copper, 
 remained largely adherent to it in the form of minute bubbles, thus in- 
 sulating it to a corresponding extent from contact with the liquid; while 
 at the same time dissolved zinc was deposited on its exposed surface. 
 
 To obviate these impediments, Professor John Frederic Daniell pro- 
 vided a porous partition between the two metals, which while permitting 
 the necessary conductibility from one side to the other, prevented the 
 convective intermixture of the separated portions of liquid, and thus 
 also allowed for the first time two different liquids to be employed for 
 bathing the different metals. The liquid employed on the copper side 
 
 * Sturgeon’s Annals of Electricity, etc. Mar. 1831), vol. iii, pp. 448, 449. 
 
38 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 was a saturated solution of the sulphate of copper; — crystals of the 
 sulphate being suspended in the liquid, for supplying the exhaustion of 
 the copper. The liquid on the zinc side was a very diluted sulphuric 
 acid. With this arrangement the oxygen evolved at the zinc surface 
 forms mainly a zinc oxide, which dissolved by the liquid into a sulphate 
 of zinc, is prevented from passing to the copper side of the partition, 
 and the hydrogen evolved at the copper surface combining at once with 
 the oxygen of the copper salt, forms water, and allows the free copper 
 to be deposited on its own plates : and Professor Daniell was able to 
 announce in a paper read before the Royal Society of London, February 
 11, 1836, “I have been led to the construction of a voltaic arrangement 
 which furnishes a constant current of electricity for any length of time 
 which may be required.” * 
 
 Although it is true that the electric telegraph may be operated by the 
 old form of battery — frequently renewed, (just as a good steam-engine 
 may be efficiently worked by an inferior and wasteful boiler,) and also 
 that a uniform current well adapted to the telegraph may be obtained 
 from the magneto-electric machine, yet the “constant” battery has 
 proved a most valuable boon in promoting the practical economy and 
 success of modern telegraphy. 
 
 1837. Mr. William Fothergill Cooke and Prof. Charles Wheatstone 
 obtained an English patent June 12, 1837, (No. 7390,) for a galvanometer 
 or needle telegraph, very similar to the earlier one of Schilling, employ- 
 ing six wires and five indicating needles. At what date Prof. Wheat- 
 stone’s attention was first directed to electrical signaling cannot now be 
 ascertained; but in 1834 he had undertaken by means of his ingenious 
 invention of the revolving mirror (capable of measuring the millionth 
 of a second), to determine the velocity of ordinary electricity through 
 half a mile of copper wire;f and a year or two later, through about four 
 miles of the same. Early in 1836, he had contemplated a telegraph which 
 with five needles, should give thirty signs. Mr. W. E. Cooke, attending 
 a lecture on electro-magnetic communication by Professor Muncke, at Hei- 
 delberg, March 6, 1836, (as previously mentioned,) at which the telegraphic 
 apparatus of Schilling was exhibited, at once “ conceived the idea.” In 
 his “ Statement of facts to the Arbitrators” in December, 1840, Mr. Cooke 
 declares : “Mr. Moncke’s experiment was at that time the only one upon 
 the subject that I had seen or heard of. It showed that electric cur- 
 rents being conveyed by wires to a distance, could be there caused to 
 
 * Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. 1836, vol. cxxau, p. 107. In the “gravity battery” of Cal- 
 laud, and of Varley, the porous diaphragm is dispensed with by placing the lighter 
 liquid (a diluted solution of zinc sulphate) above the heavier liquid (a saturated solu- 
 tion of copper sulphate); the separation being maintained by their difference of 
 specific gravity. In this arrangement the copper plate rests at the bottom of the cell, 
 and the zinc plate is supported at its top. 
 
 t Philosoph. Transac. of Roy. Soc. (read June 19, 1834), vol. cxxiv, pp. 583-589. In this 
 paper, Wheatstone says, that his first ineffectual attempt to discover a velocity of 
 electricity was made in 1830. “The method by which I then proposed to effect this 
 purpose, was announced in a lecture delivered by Dr. Faraday, at the Royal Institu- 
 tion, in June, 1830.” (p. 583.) 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 39 
 
 deflect magnetic needles, and thereby to give signals. It was in a word a 
 hint at the application of electricity to telegraphic purposes $ but nothing 
 more, for it provided no means of applying that power to practical uses. 
 [!] . . . Within three weeks after the day on which I saw the ex- 
 
 periment, I had made (partly at Heidelberg and partly at Frankfort) 
 my first electric telegraph of the galvanometer form.” * * * § This apparatus 
 comprised three indicating needles in connection with three circuits of 
 six wires ; each terminus of the line being provided with both trans- 
 mitting keys, and indicating galvanometers. Mr. Cooke also applied 
 a call-alarm, differing from Schilling’s in having an ordinary clock- 
 alarm, (similar to that used by Weber several years previously,) 
 checked by an armature detent which was released on the excitement 
 of an electro-magnet by the current. Not being skilled in electrical 
 science however, nor aware of Henry’s researches, he soon found 
 the difficulty of operating with a “ quantity ” battery his galvanometer 
 coils through a long circuit ; and in February, 1837, he was introduced 
 to Professor Wheatstone by Dr. P. M. Roget. t On comparing their 
 respective projects of a needle telegraph, the two concluded to combine 
 their exertions in a partnership ; and in a little more than three months 
 they secured a joint patent on their perfected system 4 An experimental 
 line between Euston Square and Camden Town Stations (a distance of 
 a mile and a quarter), was worked with partial success July 25, 1837 ; 
 and early in 1838, the patentees established a telegraph line between 
 taddiugton and West Dayton ; fjie distance between these two points 
 being about thirteen miles. Neither of these “ co-inventors” appears 
 at this time to have been aware of the early needle telegraph of Baron 
 Schilling, whose arrangement had been so closely imitated by Mr. 
 Cooke, and whose later simplification and improvement he had failed 
 to reach. 
 
 As illustrative of the mistaken and inaccurate manner in which im- 
 portant accounts are often transmitted by even intelligent and honest 
 men, — without due investigation and information, a quotation may here 
 be made from the “Award” of arbitration between the subsequent conflict- 
 ing claims of Cooke and of Wheatstone, rendered 27th April, 1841, by the 
 referees, Marc Isambord Brunei, the eminent engineer, and John Fred- 
 erick Daniell, the eminent chemist, meteorologist, and electrician. They 
 state: “In March, 1836, Mr. Cooke, while engaged in scientific pursuits 
 [!], witnessed for the first time one of those ay ell-known experiments on 
 electricity [!] considered as a possible means of communicating intelli- 
 gence [!], which have been tried and exhibited from time to time [!] 
 during many years by various philosophers ! Ӥ And thus, in strange 
 
 * The Electric Telegraph , etc. by William Fothergill Cooke, 2 parts, 8vo. London, 
 1856, 1857 ; part ii, “Arbitration Papers,” sects. 14, 18, pp. 14, 15. 
 
 t For an account of the circumstances attending and following this conference, see 
 “ Supplement,” Note F. 
 
 t Messrs. Cooke & Wheatstone’s English patent is dated June 12, 1837, No. 7390 ; and 
 their American patent, June 10, 1840, No. 1622. 
 
 § llie Electric Telegraph, etc. by William Fothergill Cooke, 2 parts, 8vo., London, 
 1856, 1857 ; part i, p. 14: and part ii, p. 211 ; also p. 265. 
 
40 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 exaggeration of Cooke’s contribution to telegraphy, not only is Schilling’s 
 fine invention (of which the arbitrators had probably never heard) 
 entirely overlooked, but even Professor Muncke’s intelligent exposition 
 of it, (by Mr. Cooke’s representation — a u well-known experiment,”) is 
 dismissed as the recurrent exhibition u by various philosophers,” — prob- 
 ably as familiar in London as in Heidelberg.* 
 
 1837. About the date of the Cooke and Wheatstone patent (or a month 
 or two later in the same year), a different form of electro-magnetic tele- 
 graph was being slowly developed in the city of New York. In the 
 autumn of the year 1835, an American artist of acknowledged merit and 
 of liberal education, a graduate of Yale College, about forty -five years 
 of age, was appointed professor of the arts of design in the University 
 of the city of New York, then recently established.! Occupying 
 rooms in the unfinished building, he commenced experimenting on an 
 electro-magnetic recording telegraph, the idea of which had for several 
 years been floating in his mind. An upright square frame secured to 
 the edge of a table, was provided with a transverse strip or shelf about 
 midway of its height, on which was arranged a small Sturgeon electro- 
 magnet lying upon its side, with its poles directed outward from the 
 side of the frame. Directly in front of this, a wooden pendulum sus- 
 pended from the top bar of the frame and having at its middle a small 
 iron bar acting as an armature for the magnet, was allowed a small play 
 to and from the lower part of the frame. To the lower end of the pen- 
 dulum was attached a pencil projecting downward, and made adjustable 
 so as to bear lightly against a strip of paper supported by a roller be- 
 neath, and slowly moved along near the edge of the table by clock-work, 
 after the manner usually employed in recording apparatus. A single 
 cup formed the galvanic element, and the circuit involving the electro- 
 magnet was closed and opened by means of a lever armed with a wire 
 fork which dipped into two mercury thimbles connected respectively 
 
 *Two other projects of needle telegraph on Ampere’s and Schilling’s plan, belong- 
 ing to the latter part of 1837, require here only a passing notice. The first, that of a 
 Mr. Alexander, exhibited at the Society of Arts in Edinburgh, comprised thirty trans- 
 mitting keys with pins beneath, which on being depressed, closed the circuit by dip- 
 ping into a transverse mercury trough, and thirty galvanometer needles at the 
 receiving station, each carrying a light paper screen, which just covered a painted 
 letter or mark when at rest, but which by deflection, exposed the desired letter to 
 view. By ingeniously employing but a single wire for the return path of each circuit, 
 the inventor required but thirty-one wires. {Mechanics’ Magazine , London, Nov. 
 25, 1837, No. 746, vol. xxviii, pp. 1.22, 123.) The second scheme, very similar to the 
 preceding, that of a Mr. Davy, exhibited at Exeter Hall, in London, employed but 
 eight transmitting keys, each commanding three letters by different movements, and 
 at the receiving desk twenty-four letters on ground glass, illuminated by a lamp, each 
 of which became visible only on the removal of a screen on the needle, placed behind 
 the glass. An observer remarked that in the desk “there is an aperture about 16 
 inches long and 3 or 4 inches wide, facing the eyes, perfectly dark. On this the sig- 
 nals appear as luminous letters, or combinations of letters, with a neatness and rapid- 
 ity almost magical.” ( Mecli. Mag. Feb. 3, 1838, No. 756, vol. xxviii, pp. 295, 296.) 
 
 tTliis is a different institution from the University of New York State,' which has 
 mainly a supervisory function. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 41 
 
 with the two poles of the cup battery. A series of types having on their 
 upper face teeth or cogs varying in number, were set up as desired in 
 the groove of a rule or composing-stick, which was caused to pass under 
 the free end of the circuit lever ; and in this way the oscillation of the 
 said lever over the projecting teeth determined the intervals of trans- 
 mission of the magnetizing current according to the combinations pre- 
 viously arranged in the composing-stick. The movement of the strip of 
 paper beneath the pencil of the pendulum produced a continuous 
 straight line so long as the pendulum remained at rest; but at each 
 momentary attraction of its armature by the magnet, (induced by the 
 completion of the galvanic circuit on the passage of a tooth under the 
 circuit lever,) the play of the pendulum caused a lateral deviation of its 
 pencil, which thus produced a transverse Y-shaped interruption of the 
 straight line. 
 
 With this arrangement of apparatus the projector was enabled to 
 produce signals' through short circuits of wire: but he soon discovered 
 to his dismay that on interposing more than a few yards of insulated 
 wire, the oracle was dumb. Although the remedy for this defect (first 
 discovered and demonstrated by Henry) had been for four or five years 
 familiar to the students of science, the reading of the artist had not 
 been in the direction of scientific literature ; and he had conducted his 
 experiments with a surprising indifference and inattention to the exist- 
 ing state of knowledge upon the subject. In this emergency he wisely 
 procured the scientific assistance of a colleague, Dr. Leonard D. Gale, 
 professor of chemistry in the same university, and the material and 
 mechanical assistance of Mr. Alfred Vail, of the Speedwell Iron Works 
 near Morristown, N. J. 
 
 The following is the account given by Dr. Gale of the early condition 
 of this experimental telegraph, and of his own connecton therewith : 
 u In the winter of 1836-’37, Samuel F. B. Morse, who as well’ as myself 
 was a professor in the .New York University, city of New York, came 
 to my lecture-room, and said he had a machine in his lecture-room or 
 studio which lie wished to show me. I accompanied him to his room, 
 and there saw resting on a table a single-pair galvanic battery, an elec- 
 tro-magnet, an arrangement of pencil, a paper-covered* roller, pinion- 
 wheels, levers, &c., for making letters and figures to be used for send- 
 ing and receiving words and sentences through long distances. . . . 
 
 At this time as Morse assured me no man had seen the machine except 
 his brothel*, Sidney E. Morse. . . . Morse’s machine was com- 
 
 plete in all its parts, and operated perfectly through a circuit of some 
 forty feet, but there was not sufficient force to send messages to a dis- 
 tance. At this time I was a lecturer on chemistry, and from necessity 
 was acquainted with all kinds of galvanic batteries ; and knew that a 
 battery of one or a few cups generates a large quantity of electricity, 
 capable of producing heat, &c., but not of projecting electricity to a 
 great distance ; and that to accomplish this a battery of many cups is 
 
42 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 necessary. It was therefore evident to me that the one large cup-bat- 
 tery of Morse should be made into ten or fifteen smaller ones to make 
 it a battery of intensity, so as to project the electric fluid. . . . 
 
 Accordingly I substituted the battery of many cups for the battery of 
 one cup. The remaining defect in the Morse machine, as first seen by 
 me, was that the coil of wire around the poles of the electro-magnet 
 consisted of but a few turns only, while, to give the greatest projectile 
 power, the number of turns should be increased from tens to hundreds, 
 as shoAvn by Professor Henry, in his paper published in the American 
 Journal of Science , 1831. . . . After substituting the battery of 
 
 twenty cups for that of a single cup, we added some hundred or more 
 turns to the coil of wir.e around the poles of the magnet, and sent a mes- 
 sage through 200 feet of conductors ; then through 1,000 feet ; and then 
 through ten miles of wire arranged on reels in my own lecture-room in 
 the New York University, in the presence of friends. All these experi- 
 ments were repeated with the original Morse machine, modified as I 
 have stated, by increasing the number of battery-cups and the number 
 of turns of wire around the magnet.”* 
 
 The following account by the author himself, of his first experiments, 
 is taken from his own deposition in the “Bain” case, in February, 1851 : 
 “In the year 1835, I was appointed a professor in the New York City 
 University, and about the month of November of that year I occupied 
 rooms in the university buildings. There I immediately commenced 
 with very limited means to experiment upon my invention. My first 
 instrument was made up of an old picture or canvas frame fastened to 
 a table, the wheels of an old wooden clock moved by a weight to carry 
 the paper forward, three wooden drums, upon one of which the paper 
 was wound and passed over the other two, a wooden pendulum suspended 
 to the top piece of the picture or stretching frame and vibrating across 
 the paper* as it passed over the center wooden drum, a pencil at the 
 lower end of the pendulum in contact with the paper, an electro-magnet 
 fastened to a shelf across the picture or stretching frame opposite to an 
 armature made fast to the pendulum, a type- rule and type, for closing 
 and breaking the circuit, resting on an endless band (composed of car- 
 pet-binding), which passed over two wooden rollers moved by a wooden 
 crank and carried forward by points projecting from the bottom of the 
 rule downward into the carpet-binding, a lever with a small weight on 
 
 * Memorial of S. F. B. Morse , 8vo. Washington, 1875, pp. 15-17. The practical im- 
 provements introduced by Professor Gale into the arrangement devised by Professor 
 Morse appeared to the latter so obviously mere matters of degree that he felt confi- 
 dent (after they were shown) that he would himself have effected them by simple 
 trial or experimentation ; and he does not appear ever to have realized that any scien- 
 tific principle was involved in the difference. But had he increased separately either 
 the number of his galvanic elements or the number of coils upon his magnet, he 
 would equally have failed to accomplish the desired result. The chance that he would 
 have combined these increments may be estimated as very low indeed, when we con- 
 sider that much wiser and more scientific heads had failed entirely to attain such pur- 
 pose and arrangement. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 43 
 
 the upper side and a tooth projecting downward at one end operated on 
 by the type, and a metallic fork, also projecting downward over two mer- 
 cury cups, and a short circuit of wire embracing the helices of the elec- 
 tro-magnet, connected with the positive and negative poles of the bat- 
 tery, and terminating in the mercury cups. . . . Early in 1836, I 
 
 procured forty feet of wire, and, putting it in the circuit, I found that my 
 battery of one cup was not sufficient to work my instrument. # . . . 
 
 A practical mode of communicating the impulse of one circuit to an- 
 other, such as that described in my patent of 1840, was matured as 
 early as the spring of 1837, and exhibited then to Professor Gale, 
 my confidential friend. Up to the autumn of 1837 my telegraphic 
 apparatus existed in so rude a form that I felt reluctance to have it 
 seen 
 
 In substantial accord with Professor Morse’s deposition is that of his 
 colleague and assistant, Professor Gale, taken in a previous case, and 
 dated April 1, 1848, in which it is added that “ On Saturday, the 2nd 
 day of September, 1837, Professor Daubeny,of the English Oxford Uni- 
 versity, being on a visit to this country, was invited with a few friends 
 to see the operation of the telegraph in its then rude form in the cabinet 
 of the New York City University, where it then had been put up with a 
 circuit of 1,700 feet of copper wire stretched back and forth in that long 
 room. This exhibition of the telegraph, although of very rude and im- 
 perfectly constructed machinery, demonstrated to all present the prac- 
 ticability of the invention ; and it resulted in enlisting the means, the 
 skill, and the zeal of Mr. Alfred Vail.” \ 
 
 The record made on the trial exhibited September 2d, appears not to 
 .have been entirely satisfactory, for on the following Monday (September 
 4th) a still better performance was effected, as announced by a letter of 
 that date addressed by Professor Morse to the editor of the New York 
 “Journal of Commerce,” in which the writer says: “I have the gratifica^ 
 tion of sending you a specimen of the writing of my telegraph, the actual 
 transmission of a communication made this morning, in a more complete 
 manner than on Saturday, and through the distance of one-third of a 
 mile.” This specimen of telegraphic communication, with its accompa- 
 nying letter, was re-produced in the “Journal of Commerce” three days 
 
 * [Had Professor Morse tried 50 or 100 cups, lie would have found them equally in- 
 sufficient : a fact here quite ignored. ] 
 
 t Deposition of Samuel F. B. Morse: Feb. 6, 7, and 8, 1851. In the case of “ B. B ; . 
 French and others vs. H. J. Rogers and others.” Circuit court of U. S. for E. Dist. of 
 Pa. April session 1850. No. 104. “ Complainant’s Evidence.” Ninth answer, pp. 
 
 167-169. 
 
 t Modern Telegraphy : a pamphlet by Professor Morse, Paris, 1867, Appendix, p. 19. 
 This first experimental exhibition, it must be remembered, was nearly three months 
 after the date of Cooke and Wheatstone’s patent, more than a month after their suc- 
 cessful operation through a mile and a quarter, and while the English inventors were 
 engaged in constructing a working line from Paddington to West Dayton. Mr. A. 
 Vail, a young man of fine abilities, was a pupil of Dr. Gale’s, and was by him intro- 
 duced to Professor Morse. 
 
44 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 later, and forms the earliest publication of the actual operation of the 
 u Morse telegraph.” # The dispatch is as follows : 
 
 2 15— 3 0 — 2 — 5 8 — 
 
 TYVTTA A" ^rwrm^WN'MT 
 
 112—0 4 — 01 8 3 1* 
 
 This cipher is thus explained by the writer, reference being had to a 
 dictionary suitably prepared with numbered words. “To illustrate by 
 the diagram, the word ‘successful’ is first found in the dictionary, and 
 its telegraphic number, ‘215,’ is set up in a species of type prepared for 
 the purpose ; and so of the other words. The type then operate upon 
 the machinery and serve to regulate the times and intervals of the pas- 
 sage of electricity. Each passage of the fluid causes a pencil at the ex- 
 tremity of the wire to mark the points as in the diagram. To read the 
 marks, count the points at the bottom of each line. It will be perceived 
 that two points come first, separated by a short interval from the next 
 point. Set ‘2’ beneath it. Then comes one point, likewise separated by 
 a short interval. Set ‘1’ beneath it. Then come five points. Set ‘5’ 
 beneath them. But the next interval in this case is a long interval; con- 
 sequently the three numbers comprise the whole number ‘215.’ So pro- 
 ceed with the rest until the numbers are all set down. Then by referring 
 to the telegraphic dictionary, the words corresponding to the numbers 
 are found, and the communication read. Thus it will be seen that by 
 means of the changes upon ten characters, all words can be transmit- 
 ted.”! 
 
 In the above line or diagram representing the telegraphic dispatch, 
 the symbol “A” (or inverted V), which occurs twice in the lower line, 
 represents a cipher or zero ; and this character, when preceding a figure 
 or group of figures, indicates that the figure or group is to be read as an 
 actual number, and not as the index of a word. Counting thus the num- 
 ber of Y points in the above dispatch forming groups separated by a 
 line ( — ), we obtain the following numbers : “215 — 36 — 2 — 58 — 112 — 04 
 — 01837.” And this message when translated by help of the numbered 
 dictionary will read “ Successful experiment with telegraph September 
 4 1837.” 
 
 An account of this success, published in Silliman’s Journal for Octo- 
 ber, added the statement: “Since the 4th of September, one thousand 
 feet more of wire Ao. 23 have been added, making in all two thousand 
 
 * Notwithstanding the very crude condition of this invention in September, 1837, as 
 compared with that of Schilling in 1830 (or probably in 1823), and that of Gauss in 
 1833, the fact that intelligible signals were actually exhibited by it at this date, fully 
 justifies the acceptance of this period as the time of its reduction to practical operation. 
 
 tNew York Journal of Commerce, Thursday, September 7, 1837: (on the editorial 
 page.) 
 
•HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 45 
 
 seven hundred feet, more than half a mile of a reduced size of wire. The 
 register still recorded accurately. Arrangements have been made for 
 constructing new and accurate machinery. Professor Gale, of the New 
 York City University, is engaged with Professor Morse in making some 
 interesting experiments connected with this invention, and to test the 
 effect of length of wire on the magnetizing influence of voltaic elec- 
 tricity.” * 
 
 Mr. Tail has given the following account of his connection with the 
 enterprise: “ On the 2d of September, 1837, the author with several 
 others witnessed the first exhibition of this electric telegraph,, and soon 
 after became a partner with the inventor. Immediate steps were taken 
 for constructing an instrument for the purpose of exhibiting its powers 
 before the members of Congress. This was done at the Speedwell Iron 
 Works, Morristown, N. J. and exhibited in operation with a circuit of 
 two miles. A few days after, it was again exhibited at the University of 
 the City of New York, for several days, to a large number of invited 
 ladies and gentlemen.” t 
 
 About a month after this “successful experiment,” (on the 6th of Octo- 
 ber, 1837,) Professor Morse filed in the United States Patent Office a 
 “caveat,” signed October 3, stating in the petition (dated five days 
 earlier) “ that the machinery for a full practical display of his new inven- 
 tion is not yet completed, and he therefore prays protection of his right 
 till he shall have matured the machinery.” The specification declares : 
 “ I have invented a new method of transmitting and recording intelli- 
 gence by means of electro -magnetism : . . . for the purpose afore- 
 
 said, I have invented the following apparatus, namely : First, a system 
 of signs by which numbers, and consequently words and sentences, 
 are signified ; second, a set of type adapted to regulate and communi- 
 cate the signs, with cases for convenient keeping of the type, and rules 
 in which to set up the type ; third, an apparatus called a port-rule, for 
 regulating the movement of the type-rules, which rules by means of the 
 type in their turn regulate the times and intervals of the passage of 
 electricity j fourth, a register which records the signs permanently; fifth, 
 a dictionary or vocabulary of words numbered and adapted to this sys- 
 tem of telegraph ; sixth, modes of laying the conductors to preserve 
 them from injury.” These several parts are then more particulary de- 
 scribed. “ The signs are the representatives of numerals.” The register 
 comprises an electro magnet actuating by its armature a lever or pen- 
 dulum carrying a pencil or fountain pen, or small printing wheel, for 
 marking on a strip or sheet of paper as already described. The modes 
 of laying the conductors are by insulating the wires with silk or cotton 
 wrapping, and coating with caoutchouc or other non-conductor, and also 
 by inclosing them in iron, lead, or wooden tubes. The document con- 
 cludes : “ What I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by letters. 
 
 Silliman’s Am. Jour. Sci. October, 1837, vol. xxxiii, p„ 187. 
 +A. Vail’s Electro- Magnetic Telegraph, 8vo. 1845, p. 154. 
 
46 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 piftent and to protect for one year by a caveat, is a method of record- 
 ing permanently electrical signs which by means of metallic wires or 
 other good conductors of electricity, convey intelligence between two or 
 more places.” 
 
 Of the above described apparatus, the two most important features 
 were those numbered the first and the fourth, — the system of signs and 
 the recording device; and though neither of these presented much orig- 
 inality, the method of the former being that long established for naval 
 signals, and the clock-moved fillet of the latter being essentially the ar- 
 rangement long employed for self-registering instruments generally, yet 
 the combination of these parts with the others undoubtedly possessed 
 great practical merit ; and none the less that the several elements were 
 evidently worked out independently by the inventor. It is not a little 
 remarkable however, that of the specified six parts of this earliest in- 
 vention of Professor Morse, not one enters into the established “ Morse 
 telegraph” of to-day. That feature regarded by the inventor as its vital 
 and fundamental characteristic (the fourth), the subject of his formal 
 “ claim,” survived the longest; but after undergoing considerable modi, 
 ficatiou, it has for more than twenty years been neglected and aban- 
 doned. 
 
 In response to a public circular which had been issued by the Secretary 
 of the Treasury, March 10, 1837, “with a view of obtaining information in re- 
 gard to the propriety of establishing a system of telegraphs for the United 
 States,” Professor Morse addressed a communication to the honorable Sec- 
 retary, dated September 27, 1837, pointing out the disadvantages of the old 
 mechanical telegraphs as being “useless the greater part of the time:” 
 (as in foggy weather and during the night.) He then proceeded : “Hav- 
 ing invented an entirely new mode of telegraphic communication, which 
 so far as experiments have yet been made with it, promises results of 
 almost marvelous character, I beg leave to present to the department 
 a brief account of its chief characteristics.” After stating that at the 
 time when he first conceived the thought (some five years previously) he 
 had “ planned a system of signs and an apparatus to carry it into effect,” 
 he added, “ although the rest of the machinery was planned, yet from 
 the pressure of unavoidable duties I was compelled to postpone my ex- 
 periments, and was not able to test the whole plan until within a few 
 weeks. The result has realized my most sanguine expectations.” 
 
 The construction of a more complete apparatus was carried on at the 
 Speedwell Iron Works of the Messrs. Tail, near Morristown, while Pro- 
 fessor Gale pursued his experiments at the New York City University.* 
 
 Having finished his laborious task of numbering a dictionary, Octo- 
 ber 24, 1837, Professor Morse gave more attention to the Yail Works.! 
 
 * Professor Morse, writing to Mr. Alfred Vail, October 7, 1837, says : “ Professor Gale’s 
 services will be invaluable to us, and I am glad that he is disposed to enter into the 
 matter with zeal.” 
 
 f u The dictionary is at last done. You cannot conceive how much labor there has 
 been in .it, but it is accomplished; and we can now talk or write anything by num- 
 bers.” Professor Morse to A. Vail, October 24, 1837. (Prime’s Life of Morse, chap, 
 viii, p. 326.) 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 47 
 
 On his return from a visit to the works, lie wrote back to Mr. Yail, on 
 the 13th of November, 1837, “I arrived just in time to see the experi- 
 ment Professor Gale was making with the entire ten miles, and you will 
 be gratified and agreeably surprised when I inform you that the result 
 now is that with a little addition of wire to the coils of the small mag- 
 net which I had all along used, the power was as great apparently 
 through ten as through three miles. This result has surprised us all 
 (yet there is no mistake), and I conceive settles the whole matter.” 
 
 In a second communication to the Secretary of the Treasury, dated 
 November 28,' 1837, Professor Morse announced . this encouraging suc- 
 cess: “ I informed you that I had succeeded in marking permanently 
 and intelligibly at the distance of half a mile. Professor Gale of our uni- 
 versity, and Mr. Alfred Vail, of the Speedwell Iron Works, near Mor- 
 ristown, N. J. are now associated with me in the scientific and mechan- 
 ical parts of the invention.* We have procured several miles of wire, 
 and I am happy to announce to you that our success has thus far 
 been complete. At a distance of five nyles, with a common Cruick- 
 shanks 7 battery of eighty-seven plates (four by three and a half inches, 
 each plate), the marking was as perfect on the register as in the first 
 distance of half a mile. We have recently added five miles more 
 (making in all ten miles) with the same result ; and we now have no 
 doubt of its effecting a similar result at any distance.” 
 
 On the completion of the new receiving and recording instruments at 
 the Speedwell Iron Works, an experimental exhibition at the place, with 
 three miles of coated copper wire, extended around a large factory -room, 
 was made in the presence of a few friends, on the Gth of January, 1838 ; 
 and on the 11th of January another exhibition was freely opened to the 
 public. A report of the trial in a Morristown Journal explains how 
 “the words were put up into numbers through the dictionary; the 
 numbers were set up in the telegraph type in about the same time ordi- 
 narily occupied in setting up the same in a printing office ; they were 
 then all passed complete by the port-rule ;” and being automatically 
 recorded at the extreme end of the wire, u the marks or numbers were 
 easily legible, and by means of the dictionary were resolved again into 
 words.” 
 
 Shortly after this, Professor Morse (or his assistant, Mr. Yail) devised 
 for the first time a system of alphabetic symbols for liis telegraph. It 
 should not be forgotten that the vertical recording-lever of the original 
 Morse appararatus was so arranged that it must necessarily mark a con- 
 tinuous line, either straight or zig-zag. It was never devised for an 
 u alphabet,” and was incapable of an intermittent dot or dash marking. 
 The new instrument completed by Mr. Yail, and first operated on the 
 
 * In a letter to the Hon. Francis O. J. Smith, chairman of the Committee on Com- 
 merce, House of Representatives, dated February 15, 1838, Professor Morse writes: 
 “It is proper that I should here state that the patent-right is now jointly owned in 
 unequal shares by myself, Professor Gale, of New York City University, and Messrs. 
 Alfred and George Yail.’ 7 The patent was not actually issued till more than two years 
 later. 
 
48 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Gtli of January, 1838, was differently organized, tlie recording-lever being 
 for the first time arranged horizontally, and having an .up and down 
 movement, with an upright magnet under one end, and the moving fillet 
 of paper above the other. ^ 
 
 On the 24th of January, 1838, an exhibition of the new apparatus and 
 of its improved operation, was given at the New York City University > 
 in the long room of the geological cabinet, through ten miles of wire; 
 one of the five-mile reels being placed in the outgoing portion of the cir- 
 cuit, and the other five-mile reel on the returning line. On this occasion 
 for the first time the words transmitted were entered, and recorded, in 
 the new alphabet without the aid of the numbered dictionary.! The 
 New York Journal of Commerce in noticing this performance remarked : 
 “ 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.”! 
 
 The instrument thus brought to a satisfactory working condition, was 
 designed to be sent to Washington for exhibition to officers of the Na- 
 tional Government, with a view of obtaining a grant from Congress for 
 the construction of an actual line of telegraph between two cities. On 
 the way from New York, the apparatus with its reels of wire was ex- 
 hibited at Philadelphia, before a committee of the Franklin Institute 
 (at its hall), on the 8th of February, 1838. The committee (whose chair- 
 man was Prof. Robert M. Patterson, then Director of the United States 
 Mint at Philadelphia), after a careful examination, reported : 
 
 “The operation of the telegraph as exhibited to us was very satis- 
 factory. The power given to the magnet at the register through a length 
 of wire of ten miles, was abundantly sufficient for the movements re" 
 quired to mark the signals. The communication of this power was in- 
 stantaneous.” Referring then to the probable difficulties of efficient in- 
 sulation, the committee proceeded: “Mr. Morse has proposed several 
 plans; the last being to cover the wires with cotton thread, then varnish 
 them thickly with gum-elastic, and inclose the whole in leaden tubes. 
 More practical and economical means will probably be devised ; but the 
 fact is not to be concealed that any effectual plan must be very expen- 
 sive^ Doubts have been raised as to the distance to which the electri- 
 
 * On the question of the origin and invention of the “ Morse-Alphabet,” see “Sup- 
 plement,” Note G. 
 
 tThe message sent through the wire on this occasion (Wednesday, January 24, 
 1838,) is spoken of as “the first sentence that was ever recorded by the telegraph.” 
 (Prime’s Life of Morse , 8vo. N. Y. 1875, p. 331.) It was the first employment of the 
 rectilinear dot and dash symbols. 
 
 {Nfew York Journal of Commerce of January 29, 1833. 
 
 § [It is to be remembered that Gauss and Weber, as also Steinheil, at this date had 
 in actual and successful operation telegraph lines several miles in length, whose naked 
 wires through the air were insulated only at their points of support. Although this 
 important discovery of Weber had been in practical and public operation for about five 
 years, no particular account of it seems to have been at that time published in this, 
 country. ] 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 49 
 
 eity of an ordinary battery can be made efficient; but your committee 
 think that no serious difficulty is anticipated as to this point. The ex- 
 periment with the wire wound in a coil may not in deed be deemed con- 
 elusive. ^ ... It may be proper to state that the idea of using elec- 
 tricity for telegraphic purposes has presented itself to several individu- 
 als, and that it may be difficult to settle among them the question of orig- 
 inality. The celebrated Gauss has a telegraph of this kind in actual 
 operation, for communicating signals between the University of Got- 
 tingen and his magnetic observatory in its vicinity. ... In con- 
 clusion, the committee beg leave to state their high gratification with 
 the exhibition of Professor Morse’s telegraph, and their hope that means 
 may be given to him to subject it to the test of an actual experiment 
 made between stations at a considerable distance from each other.” * 
 
 About the middle of February, (1838,) Professor Morse arrived in Wash- 
 ington with his instrument and his reels of wire, and exhibited the ope- 
 ration of the telegraph to many dignitaries of the e xecutive and legisla 
 tive branches of government. A memorial was indented to Congress 
 by the inventor, asking an appropriation to defray the expense of an 
 experimental line between two cities; which being referred to the Com- 
 mittee on Commerce by the House of Kepresentatives, was favorably 
 reported by that committee April 6, through its chairman, Hon. Francis 
 0 . J. Smith. “ The committee agree unanimously that it is worthy to 
 m gross the attention and means of the Federal Government to the full 
 extent that may be necessary to put the invention to the most decisive 
 best that can be desirable;” and in accordance with this opinion, “the 
 committee recommend an appropriation of thirty thousand dollars, to be 
 expended under the direction of the Secretary ot t lie Treasury; and to 
 diis end submit herewith a bill.” This bill however failed to receive 
 bhe support of the majority, and a favorable action on this measure was 
 lot obtained for several years. 
 
 Meanwhile Professor Morse had been engaged with a killful attorney 
 n preparing papers with a view to obtaining a patent. The specifica- 
 tion (signed April 7, 1838) includes, in addition to the several parts de- 
 scribed in the earlier caveat of October 3, 1837, the recei*tly-de vised 
 system of alphabetic signs, a rotary port-rule for continuous action 
 md a combination of circuits or electro-magnetic “ relays.” The inven- 
 tion is described as “an application of electro-magnetism in producing 
 sounds and signs, or either, and also for recording permanently by the 
 same means . . . any signs thus produced.” “ It consists of the fol- 
 owing parts: First, a circuit of electric or galvanic conductors,” etc. 
 
 I Second, a system of signs by which numerals and words represented by 
 minerals, and thereby sentences of words, as well as of numerals, and let- 
 ers of any extent and combination of each, are communicated.” “Third, 
 i set of type adaxited to regulate the communication of the above-men- 
 tioned signs.” “ Fourth, an apparatus called the port-rule [straight or 
 
 * Journal of Franklin Institute, February, 1838, vol. xxi, n. s. pp. 10(5-108. 
 
 4 E T 
 
50 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 circular] which regulates the movement of the type.” u Fifth , a signal- 
 lever which breaks and connects the circuit of conductors.”* u Sixth, a 
 register which records permanently the signs communicated.” u Sev- 
 enth, a dictionary, or vocabulary of words, to which are prefixed nu- 
 merals.” u Eighth, modes of laying the circuit of conductors.” 
 
 After filing his application in the Patent Office, in order not to be 
 forestalled in his intended efforts to obtain patents in Europe, by his 
 own patent being sent and published abroad, Professor Morse filed a 
 request that its issue might be suspended till his return. 
 
 Although the favorable report on the Morse memorial to Congress, 
 made to the House of Representatives by its committee, failed to secure 
 the appropriation recommended, Mr. Francis O. J. Smith, the chairman, 
 was so well satisfied of the merits of the new telegraph, that on leaving 
 Congress he at once became a partner in the enterprise, and accompanied 
 Professor Morse in his departure for London, May 16, 1838. f 
 
 In consequence of the opposition of Wheatstone and Cooke, who ha d 
 obtained an English patent June 12, 1837, Professor Morse’s application 
 for a patent in Great Britain was refused by the attorney- general, Sir 
 John Campbell, July 12, 1838, (after the exaction of heavy fees,) on an 
 unquestionable judicial quibble. The ostensible ground of rejection was 
 clearly not warranted by the spirit or intent of the English patent law, 
 as the details of the patent sought, had never been published either in 
 this country or abroad.]: 
 
 The success of the American inventor in France was practically no 
 greater $ for although a nominal patent for that country was obtained 
 on August 18, 1838, it was rendered nugatory by the ingenious legal 
 
 * Although the “ si glial -lever ” is here specially indicated, it differs widely in con- 
 struction, arrangement, and operation, from the modern signal-lever or transmitting 
 key ; having only the function in common with it of a circuit- breaker. In his pam- 
 phlet, published at Paris in 1867, giving an account of his invention, Professor Morse 
 says: “At the time of the construction of this first telegraphic instrument, I had not 
 conceived the idea of the present key manipulator dependent on the skill of the opera- 
 tor, but I presumed that the accuracy of the imprinting of signs could only be secured 
 hy mechanical mathematical arrangements and by automatic process.” ( Modern Tele- 
 graphy , etc. p. 25.) In his argument presented to Sir John Campbell, the attorney- 
 general of England, July 12, 1838, he urges as an evidence of characteristic novelty, 
 “These types form such an essential part of my invention, that without them the prac- 
 tical utility and value of my invention is for the most part destroyed, and full one- 
 half of the mechanism is disconnected from it, and is of no use in it.” The Morse lever 
 must not therefore be confounded with the existing finger-key. “ The spring-lever 
 key, as at present used in the Morse office, was suggested by Mr. Thomas C. Avery, of 
 New York, but has received various modifications.” (Turnbull’s Electro-Magnetic 
 Telegraph , 1852, pp. 49, 50.) 
 
 t “With this understanding a partnership was formed between Professor Morse, 
 Professor Gale, Mr. Alfred Tail, and Hon. F. O. J. Smith, by the terms of which it was 
 stipulated that Mr. Smith should go to Europe with Professor Morse, and secure 
 patents for the telegraph in such countries as it should be practicable for him to do 
 so.” (Prime’s Life of Morse, chap, viii, p. 344.) 
 
 t Notwithstanding their illiberal interference with Morse’s application in 1838, 
 Messrs. William F. Cooke and Charles Wheatstone had the “self-possession” eighteen 
 months later each to write a letter to Professor Morse, (dated January 17, 1840,) beg- 
 ging him to join them in their efforts to obtain an American patent ! As a character- 
 istic illustration of official contrast, Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone (contrary to their 
 expectations), on their own application, secured an American patent without opposi- 
 tion or obstruction June 10, 1840, ten days before the issue of Morse’s patent, applied 
 for more than tw r o years earlier. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 51 
 
 conditions, first, that to prevent forfeiture the patented invention must 
 be carried into successful operation in France within two years; and 
 secondly, that all private persons, companies, or corporations, were pro- 
 hibited from putting a telegraph into operation in France. Disappointed 
 in various promising expectations, and discouraged by repeated failures, 
 Professor Morse returned to New York, April 15, 1839. 
 
 In May, 1839, he visited Princeton, for the purpose of seeing Professor 
 Henry and obtaining from him the solution of certain doubts; — his col- 
 league, Dr. Gale, being then absent on business. During this his first 
 interview with Henry, occupying an afternoon and evening, he received 
 from the full and frank expositions of his host every satisfaction he de- 
 sired; and he had the great encouragement of hearing from the lips of 
 that cautious investigator, that he foresaw no difficulty in magnetizing 
 soft iron through a wire u at the distance of a hundred miles or more.”* 
 
 The application filed by Professor Morse in the United States Patent 
 Office, before he visited Europe, was allowed, and issued as a patent 
 June 20, 1840. (No. 1647.) This patent comprised nine claims : 1, the 
 combination of type, rule, lever, &c. ; 2, the recording cylinder, &c. ; * 3, 
 the types, signs, &c. ; 4, the making and breaking of the circuit by 
 mechanism, &c. ; 5, the combination of successive circuits ; 6, the appli- 
 cation of electro magnets to several levers, &c. ; 7, the mode and process 
 of recording by the use of electro-magnetism ; 8, the combination and 
 arrangement of electro- magnets in one or more circuits, with armatures 
 for transmitting signs ; and 9, the combination of the mechanism de- 
 scribed, with a dictionary of numbered words. 
 
 The appropriation asked for from Congress, though earnestly pressed 
 at successive sessions, failed to obtain the sanction of the House of 
 Representatives; until after a wearisome delay of five years, a bill was 
 finally carried through Congress, March 3, 1843, authorizing an expendi 
 ture of u the sum of thirty thousand dollars, . . . for testing the 
 
 capacity and usefulness of the system of electro-magnetic telegraphs 
 invented by Samuel F. B. Morse, of New York.” 
 
 The stations selected for connection by the new telegraph were Wash- 
 ington and Baltimore, about forty miles apart. In order to form two 
 complete circuits for this distance, one hundred and sixty miles of cop- 
 per wire, covered with cotton, were ordered and delivered at New York 
 City. Before inclosing the four lines in pipes, as contemplated, Professor 
 Morse prudently determined to experiment on the magnetizing effect 
 through this continuous length of insulated wire! The result of this 
 experiment, which fully justified the expectation of Henry expressed to 
 him four years before, is thus stated in a letter addressed to the Sec- 
 retary of the Treasury, August 10, 1843 : 
 
 * Prime’s Life of Morse , chap, x, pp. 421, 422. Dr. Prime says of this visit, “ A few 
 days after receiving Professor Henry’s kind invitation,. Professor Morse went to Prince- 
 ton, and passing the afternoon and evening with the great philosopher, returned the 
 next morning to New York.” 
 
52 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 “The experiments alluded to were tried on Tuesday, and with per- 
 fect success. I had prepared a galvanic battery of three hundred pairs, 
 in order to have ample power at command ; but to my great gratifica- 
 tion, I found that one hundred pairs were sufficient to produce all the 
 effects I desired through the whole distance of one hundred and sixty 
 miles. It may be well to observe that the hundred and sixty miles of 
 wire are to be divided into four lengths of forty miles each, forming a four- 
 fold cord from Washington to Baltimore. Two wires form a circuit $ the 
 electricity therefore in producing its effects at Washington from Balti- 
 more, passes from Baltimore to Washington and back again to Baltimore, 
 of course travelling eighty miles to produce its result. One hundred 
 and sixty miles therefore gives me an actual distance of eighty miles ; 
 double the distance from Washington to Baltimore. The result then of 
 my experiments on Tuesday, is that a battery of only a hundred pairs at 
 Washington, will operate a telegraph on my plan eighty miles distant 
 with certainty, and without requiring any intermediate station. 77 
 
 As it was part of the original plan (as set forth in the caveat of 1837) 
 to lay the conducting wires underground, Professor Morse, in 1843, de- 
 vised a method of forming a lead pipe around the group of prepared and 
 insulated wires, that is of introducing the compound cord into the pipe 
 in the process of its construction. He obtained a patent for this project 
 October 25, 1843, (No. 3316,) claiming u the method of introducing wires 
 into hollow pipes whilst making the same, by introducing the wires 
 through a hollow mandrel on which the pipe is made. 77 This process 
 was practically carried out, though with the extreme risk of constantly 
 impairing the insulation of the wires by the operation. 
 
 Professor Gale has given the following account of the method of lay- 
 ing the telegraph line and of the result. “A plow was used, with a share 
 running two and a half feet deep, and carrying a coil of insulated wire 
 inclosed in a coil of lead pipe which the plow deposited in the ground 
 and covered as the plow progressed. Forty miles of lead pipe were made 
 in New York in the autumn of 1843, and shipped to Baltimore in the end 
 of November. Up to this date I had been engaged in New York inspecting 
 the manufacture of the lead pipe and charging the same with the insulated 
 wire fed into the pipe by machinery while the pipe was drawn. I reached 
 Baltimore in the early part of December, and learned that the party had 
 nearly reached the Belay House. Nine miles had been laid ; on inspection 
 of which, not one mile of wire was found to be sufficiently insulated to 
 carry the electric current from end to end of the reach. 77 * 
 
 The plan was finally abandoned early in 1844, after more than half of 
 
 * Morse Memorial, Washington, 1875, pp. 18, 19. Steinlieil, in 1837, remarked : “Numer- 
 ous trials to insulate wires and to conduct them below the surface of the ground have 
 led me to the conviction that such attempts can never answer at great distances, in- 
 asmuch as our most perfect insulators are at best hut very bad conductors. And since 
 in a wire of very great length the surface in contact with the so-called insulator is 
 u icommonly large when compared with the section of the metallic conductor, there 
 necessarily arises a gradual diminution of force.” (Sturgeon’s Annals of Electricity, 
 etc. April, 1839, vol. iii, p. 510.) 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 53 
 
 the appropriation had been expended.* In March, 1844, it was decided 
 to put the wires on poles, after the manner successfully adopted by 
 Weber at Gottingen eleven years before. The different plans of insulat- 
 ing support proposed, were submitted by Professor Morse to Henry for 
 his opinion, and he decided in favor of Mr. Ezra Cornell’s plan of sepa- 
 rating the wires as far apart as convenient, and attaching each wire to 
 an independent glass insulator, t The line was accordingly erected on 
 this plan ; and by the middle or latter part of May, 1844, was completed 
 frem Washington to Baltimore. On the 24th of that month, the first 
 formal message was transmitted through it between the two cities, and 
 recorded by the electro -magnet in the dot-and-dash alphabet-! From 
 this time the success of the electric telegraph in the United States was 
 assured, and its extension over our broad domain was comparatively 
 rapid. 
 
 This prolonged review of the history of the u Morse telegraph” has 
 been ventured upon in this connection, partly to bring out into just re- 
 lation and relief one or two important points, and in part to illustrate 
 the gradual progress of development of the system, in the career of a 
 single inventor. With that strong u subjectivity” (perhaps essential to 
 the success both of the artist and of the artisan) which characterized 
 him, Professor Morse always believed his invention to have been prac- 
 tically full-fledged at its birth, or rather at its conception ; and quite 
 unconscious of the slow and small advances derived from gathered ex- 
 perience or external suggestion, failed seemingly to realize how com- 
 pletely his earlier methods were discarded and displaced by later improve- 
 ments^ 
 
 * Professor Morse says: “ It was abandoned, among other reasons, in consequence of 
 ascertaining that in the process of inserting the wire into the leaden tubes (which was 
 at the moment of forming the tube from the lead at melting heat) the insulated cover- 
 ing of the wires had become charred at various and numerous points of the line to such 
 an extent that greater delay and expense would be necessary to repair the damage 
 than to put the wire on posts.” (Prime’s Life of Morse, chap, xi, p. 478.) 
 
 tMr. Cornell afterward distinguished himself by devoting, in 1865, half a million of 
 dollars from the profits of his telegraphic enterprises, to the founding at Ithaca, N. Y. 
 of the university bearing his name. He subsequently contributed nearly as much 
 more ; making his total endowment in the neighborhood of a million dollars. 
 
 tTlie completion of the experimental telegraph authorized by act of Congress was 
 thus formally announced by Professor Morse to the Secretary of the Treasury, under 
 whose direction the appropriation had been placed : “ Washington, June 3, 1844. Sir : 
 I have the honor to report that the experimental essay authorized by the act of Con- 
 gress on March 3, 1843, appropriating 30,000 dollars for testing my system of electro- 
 magnetic telegraph, ‘ and of such length and between such points as shall test its 
 practicability and utility,’ has been made between Washington and Baltimore, a dis- 
 tance of forty miles, connecting the Capitol in the former city with the railroad depot 
 in Pratt street in the latter city. . . .” This was six years after the English line 
 
 of thirteen miles had been in operation. While Lomond, in 1787, and Steinheil, in 1837 
 had employed but a single wire for transmitting messages from either end, Morse, in 
 1844, required two circuits of four wires for the same perfonnance ; cue pair of wires for 
 the outward and one pair for the inward passage. 
 
 $ In a letter addressed to Donald Mann, esq., December, 1852, Professor Morse rather 
 quaintly remark^: “In elaborating the invention in its earlier stages, many modifica- 
 tions of its various parts were tried, and many of the supposed improvements then 
 deemed necessary to its perfection have since been found unnecessary and useless.” 
 ( American Telegraph Magazine, December 15, 1852, vol. i, No. 3, p. 130.) 
 
54 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Mose's “ first conception .” — After a three years’ sojourn in Europe, from 
 1829 to 1832, spent principally in Italy, devoted exclusively to the study 
 and pursuit of his art as painter, Mr. Morse on his homeward voyage 
 from France in the ship Sully, formed the acquaintance of Dr. Charles. 
 T. Jackson, of Boston, a fellow- passenger. He first “ conceived the idea” 
 of an electric telegraph on the 19th of October, 1832, from a conversa- 
 tion with Dr. Jackson on the subject ; and the suggestion impressed him 
 with the surprise of a truly new conception. His first thought appears 
 to have been the application of electricity or galvanism to a chemically 
 recording telegraph; and this project, laid aside for that of the electro- 
 magnet, was afterward revived and cherished, till in 1849, he procured a 
 patent for it, as already stated. 
 
 Professor Morse in his letter to Dr. C. T. Jackson, dated September 18, 
 1837, controverting the claim of the latter to a share in the invention of 
 the electric telegraph, says : “ I lose no time in endeavoring to disabuse 
 
 your mind of an error into which it has fallen in regard to the electro- 
 magnetic telegraph. You speak of it as 4 our electric telegraph,’ and as 
 a ‘mutual discovery.’ ... 1 have a distinct recollection of the man- 
 
 ner, the place, and the moment, when the thought of making an electric 
 wire the means of communicating intelligence, first came into my mind. 
 
 . . . We were conversing on the recent scientific discoveries in elec- 
 tro-magnetism ; . . . I then remarked, this being so, if the presence 
 
 of electricity can be made visible in any desired part of the circuit, I 
 see up reason why intelligence might not be transmitted instantaneously 
 by electricit 3 T . You gave your assent that it was possible. ... I 
 asked you if there was not some mode of decomposition which could be 
 turned to account. You suggested the following experiment, which we 
 agreed should be tried together, if we could meet for that purpose. It 
 was this: to decompose by electricity glauber salts upon the paper 
 which was first to be colored with turmeric.” The writer then argues, 
 that this plan not having been jointly tried, and an entirely different 
 device (the electro magnet) having been adopted by himself, there was no 
 joint invention.* 
 
 In his letter to Dr. 0. T. Jackson, dated December 7, 1837, Professor 
 Morse says: “I consulted you to ascertain if there were not some sub- 
 stance easily decomposed by the simple contact of a wire in an electric 
 state. It was then, and not till then, that you suggested turmeric paper 
 dipped in a solution of sulphate of soda. . . . I do not charge yon 
 
 with intentional neglect; I readily allow your excuses for not trying the 
 experiments; but these excuses do not alter the fact that your neglect 
 retarded my invention, and compelled me after five years’ delay, to con- 
 sider the result of that experiment as a failure, and consequently to de- 
 
 * Am os Kendall’s Full Exposure of Dr. Charles T. Jackson’s Pretensions , etc. First edi- 
 tion, N. Y. 1850. Second edition, printed in Paris, 1867 : pp. 64, 65. Neither Professor 
 Morse nor Dr. Jackson was aware that the project had been suggested seventeen years 
 before, by Dr. J. R. Coxe, of Philadelphia; and that it had been successfully tried 
 four or live years before, by Mr. H. G. Dyar, of New York. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 55 
 
 vise another mode of applying my apparatus, — a mode entirely original 
 with me.” # 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Alfred Vail, not long after having formed a partner- 
 ship with that gentleman, he wrote : u I claim to be the original 
 suggester and inventor of the electric magnetic telegraph, on the 19th 
 of October, 1832, on board the packet- ship Sully, on my voyage from 
 France to the United States, and consequently the inventor of the first 
 really practicable telegraph on the electric principle.” t Some ten years 
 later he wrote to Professor Walker : u It is at the date, 1832, of Baron 
 Schilling’s invention of his needle-telegraph (since abandoned as imprac- 
 ticable from various and obvious causes), that I conceived my electro- 
 magnetic telegraph, and first devised an apparatus applying magnetism 
 produced by electricity or the power of the electro-magnet to imprint 
 characters at a distance.” J And such was ever his firm conviction. 
 Some twenty years later, he wrote at Paris: “ If it be asked why I have 
 assumed the date of the year 1832 as a standpoint, I reply, because at 
 that date the idea was first conceived, and the process and means first 
 developed.” § 
 
 The invention however as unfolded in his caveat of October 3, 1837 
 is sufficiently embryonic for physiological study; and though our patent 
 law, on grounds of sound policy, excludes all evidence of the inception 
 of a foreign competitive invention, admitting only perfected and fully 
 published details successfully to interfere (in a question of priority) with 
 the first suggestions of the American inventor, || obviously no such x>atri- 
 otic rule is admissible in any scientific history of the progress of actual 
 discovery. Interesting as the earliest gleams of a successful application 
 and invention undoubtedly are, they are too little accessible to impar- 
 tial investigation to claim the prerogative of a recognized chronology. 
 
 * This letter seems very positively to exclude the claim to having “conceived the 
 idea” of the magnetic telegraph in 1832. 
 
 t Vail’s Electro- Hog netic Telegraph , 1845, p. 154. 
 
 + Morse’s letter to Professor Sears C. Walker, dated Washington, January 31, 1848, 
 The writer is excusable for assuming 1832 as the date qf Baron Schilling’s invention, 
 (the date ©f his return from China,) as this is the date usually assigned in the popular, 
 text-books. Schilling’s invention however so far from being either “impracticable” 
 or “abandoned,” is the essential basis of the telegraph now in use throughout Eng- 
 land. 
 
 § Modern Telegraphy , a pamphlet by S. F. B. Morse. Paris, 1867, p. 10. In a letter to 
 Donald Mann, esq. (editor of the Telegraph Magazine), dated “Poughkeepsie, De- 
 cember, 1852,” Professor Morse stoutly maintained his claim to priority of practical 
 development (if not of first conception) of an electric recording telegraph ; and with 
 paternal exaggeration he declared, of his first crude experiment at the close of the year 
 1835, “The truth is, the child was born, and breathed, and spoke, in 1835. It had 
 then all the essential characteristics of the future mau.” ( American Telegraph Maga- 
 zine. December 15, 1852, vol. i, No. 3, p. 130.) Its first transmission of an intelligible 
 message was made September 2, 1837. 
 
 || “ Whenever it appears that a patentee at the time of making liis applica- 
 tion for the patent believed himself to be the original and first inventor or dis- 
 coverer of the thing patented, the same shall not be held to be void on account of the 
 invention or discovery, or any part thereof, having been known or used in a foreign 
 country before his invention or discovery thereof, if it had not been patented or 
 described in a printed publication.” {Act of July 4, 1836, section 15, Revised Statutes , 
 approved March 2, 1877, title lx, sec. 4923. ) 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 5G 
 
 Whether judged by tlie standard of original conception, of practical 
 operation, or of actual introduction into use, the Morse telegraph must 
 be assigned a position tolerably low down in the list.* More than six- 
 teen years before Professor Morse’s first conception of the idea, Dr. J* 
 It. Coxe, professor of chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, at 
 the beginning of 1816, u conceived the idea” of a practical electro-chemi- 
 cal telegraph, whose signals should be permanently recorded by the de- 
 composition of metallic salts ; 1 the precursor of D jar’s electro-chemical 
 telegraph, successfully operated in 1828, (about five years before Morse’s 
 first conception,) — of Bain’s electro-chemical telegraph, (patented De- 
 cember 12, 1846,) — and of Morse’s electro chemical telegraph, (patented 
 May 1, 1849,) a third of a century afterward. Schilling’s electro-mag- 
 netic telegraph developed to a u practical operation” in 1823, certainly 
 before 1825, preceded that of Morse more than a dozen years. And the 
 electro magnetic telegraph of Gauss and Weber (certainly u conceived” 
 before 1832) was in actual use and employment more than ten years 
 before the similar establishment by Professor Morse; while that of 
 Steinheil, probably conceived as early, was some eight years earlier 
 than his in its practical introduction into use.| 
 
 That Professor Morse would greatly have e xpedited his own improve- 
 ments, and have saved himself a large amount of wasted time and labor, 
 if he had studied more carefully the state of the art at the commence- 
 ment of his experiments in 1835, is sufficiently obvious. But his com- 
 plete unconsciousness — not only of the earlie r successes of others in de- 
 veloping the galvanic telegraph, but of even the elementary facts of sci- 
 entific history bearing on the problem, as well at the time of his original 
 u conception” on board the ship Sully from the fecundating suggestion 
 of Dr. Jackson, as during the years following, in which the invention 
 was being slowlj T matured, — would be incredible on an y other testimony 
 than his own. In his first letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, dated 
 September 27, 1837, he announced “having invented an entirely new 
 mode of telegraphic communication.” In a letter to Mr. A. Vail, some 
 time afterward, he wrote: u I ought perhaps to say that the conception 
 of the idea of an electric telegraph was original with me at that time, 
 and I supposed that I was the first that had ever associated the two 
 words together, nor was it until my invention was completed and had 
 been successfully operated through ten miles, that I for the first time 
 
 * Nearly two years before Professor Morse had met with Dr. C. T. Jackson, Henry had 
 “conceived” and executed an ex})eri mental electro-magnetic telegraph, of a mile circuit. 
 
 t Thomson’s Annals of Philosophy, February, 1816, vol. vii, p. 163. 
 
 tin a letter to his daughter dated July *26, 1838, (written from Havre, just on his 
 arrival in France from London,) Professor Morse says somewhat curiously of the tele- 
 graph of Wheatstone, “he has invented his I believe without knowing that I was 
 engaged in au invention to produce a similar result ; for although he dates back to 
 1832, yet as no publication of our thoughts was made by either, we are evidently in- 
 dependent of each other.” (Prime’s Life of Morse, chap, ix, p. 3 >8.) The popular in- 
 fatuation in England as to the originality and priority of the Cooke aud Wheatstone 
 telegraph is probably quite equal to that prevalent in America as to the superior 
 claims of the Morse telegraph. Wheatstone’s scientifio distinction or his title to en- 
 during fame, fortunately does not repose on his telegraph. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 57 
 
 learned that the idea of an electric telegraph had been conceived by 
 another. ” # 
 
 Some time earlier than this, or five years after their conversations on 
 ship-board, Professor Morse wrote to Dr. Jackson, (in a letter dated 
 August 27, 1837, seeking his indorsement of the writer’s originality in 
 electrical telegraphy,) and avowed : u I claim for myself, and consequently 
 for America, priority over all other countries in the invention of a mode 
 of communicating intelligence by electricity!” In a second letter to the 
 same person, dated New York City University, September 18, 1837, 
 acknowledging his correspondent’s original introductory remarks on 
 electricity and electro magnetism during their homeward voyage, but 
 differing from him as to some of the consequent circumstances, he 
 affirmed: “I then remarked, this being so, if the presence of electricity 
 can be made visible in any desired part of the circuit, I see no reason 
 why intelligence might not be transmitted instantaneously by elec- 
 tricity!” And in the same letter he contended, “ The disco v ery is the 
 original suggestion of conveying intelligence by electricity.f The in ven- 
 tion is devising the mode of conveying it. The discovery, so far as we 
 alone are concerned, belongs to me: and if by an experiment which we 
 proposed to try together we had mutually fixed upon a successful mode 
 of conveying intelligence, then we might with some propriety be termed 
 mutual or joint iuventors. But as we have never tried any experiment 
 together, nor has the one proposed to be tried by you, been adopted by 
 me, I cannot see how we can be called mutual inventors. You are 
 aware perhaps that the mode I have carried into effect after many and 
 various experiments with the assistance of my colleague, Professor Gale, 
 was never mentioned either by you or to you.f ... I have always 
 said in giving any account of my telegraph, that it was on board the 
 ship during a scientific conversation with you that I first conceived the 
 thought of an electric telegraph. I have acknowledgments of similar 
 kinds to make to Professor Silliman and Professor Gale, . . . and 
 
 to the latter I am most of all indebted for substantial and effective 
 aid in many of my experiments. If any one has a claim to be mutual 
 inventor on the score of aid by hints, it is Professor Gale ; but he pre- 
 fers no claim of the kind.Ӥ In his third letter, dated New York City 
 
 * Vail’s Electro- Magnetic Telegraph , p. 154. 
 
 t Professor Morse’s conception of 1 ‘discovery” does not appear to have been very pro- 
 found. 
 
 + [Another explicit statement that he did not “ conceive the idea” of the magnetic 
 telegraph in 1832, or on board the ship Sully. ] 
 
 § Dr- Jackson in his reply, dated Boston, November 7, 1837, said: “ This claim of 
 yours is to me a matter of surprise and regret. . . . You will not I presume 
 
 venture to maintain that you at that time knew anything about electro-magnetism 
 more than what you learned from me. ... I am certainly desirous of doing you 
 justice to the fullest extent, and have always spoken of your merits as I hope I shall 
 always have occasion to do. . . . Honor to whom honor is due shall be my 
 
 motto, and I must I believe fail in this duty if I should say that the first idea of ail 
 
 electro-magnetic telegraph was conceived by an Americancitizen. . . . The ‘dis- 
 covery’ is not then to be claimed by us. I have invented a new instrument; so per- 
 haps you have, for I do not yet know what your new one is, since you say I have not 
 seen it nor heard about it beyond your announcement. ” 
 
58 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 University, December 7, 1837, Professor Morse reiterated : “Your mem- 
 ory and mine are at variance in regard to the first suggestion of convey- 
 ing intelligence by electricity. I claim to be the one who made it, and 
 in the way which I stated in my letter to you. . . . The idea that 
 
 I had made a brilliant discovery, that it was original in my mind, was 
 the exciting cause and the perpetual stimulus to urge me forward in 
 maturing it to a result. Had I supposed at that time, that the thought 
 had ever occurred to any other person, I would never have pursued itj 
 and it was not till I had completed my present invention, that I was 
 aware that the thought of conveying intelligence by electricity had 
 occurred to scientific men some years before. . . . The single scien- 
 
 tific fact ascertained by Franklin, that electricity can be made to travel 
 any distance instantaneously, is all that I needed to know, aside from 
 mathematical and mechanical science, in order to plan all I invented on 
 board the ship.”* 
 
 These extracts sufficiently show the distinguished inventor’s profound 
 incomprehension, as well of the nature of the problem to be solved, as 
 of the scientific principles involved in surmounting his fundamental 
 difficulties. That his colleague, Professor Gale, should by the mere ap- 
 plication of existing knowledge and established fact, make his magnetic 
 signals operative through successively increasing lengths of wire until 
 ten miles were included in the circuit, appeared— if remarkable, at least 
 quite natural. That any special credit should be due to any one but 
 himself and his invention, in the accomplishment of such a result, ap- 
 peared no less unnatural and irrational : and Dr. Gale has recorded 
 u Professor Morse’s great surprise” when his attention was first called to 
 Henry’s paper in Silliman’s Journal of January, 1831, a year or two after 
 his magnet and battery had been so modified in accordance therewith 
 as to correlate them in “ intensity.” That even then the inventor under- 
 stood the real import of the paper is rendered doubtful by subsequent 
 developments : his surprise being apparently excited mainly by Henry’s 
 suggestion that his researches were “ directly applicable to the project 
 of forming an electro-magnetic telegraph.” 
 
 Prof. Sears 0. Walker, the eminent astronomer, in a deposition taken 
 in a telegraph suit of “French vs: Kogers,” has thus recorded his recol- 
 lection of an interesting interview between Professors Henry, Morse, and 
 Gale, in January, 1848, at which he was present : “ The result of the in- 
 terview was conclusive to my mind that Professor Henry was the sole 
 discoverer of the law on which the ^intensity’ magnet depends for its 
 power of sending the galvanic current through a long circuit. I was 
 also led to conclude that Mr. Morse in the course of his own researches 
 and experiments, before he read Professor Henry’s article before alluded 
 to, had encountered the same difficulty Mr. Barlow and those who preceded 
 him had Rencountered ; that is the impossibility of forcin g the gal v anic 
 
 * Full Exposure of Dr. Charles T. Jackson’s Pretensions, etc. By Amos Kendall. 1st ed. 
 1850 ; 2d ed. printed in Paris, 1867 : pp. 61-74. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 59 
 
 current through a long telegraph line. His own personal researches had 
 not overcome this obstacle. I also learned at the same time, by the con- 
 versations above stated, that he only overcame this obstacle by con- 
 structing a magnet on the principle invented by Professor Henry, and 
 described in his article in Silliman’s Journal. Ilis attention was directed 
 to it by Dr. Gale.”* 
 
 In consequence of this friendly interview, Professor Morse, with a 
 frankness creditable to the natural impulses of his character, a short 
 time afterward addressed a letter to Professor Walker, from which the 
 following extracts are made: 
 
 “Washington, January 31, 1848. 
 
 “ Dear Sir : I have perused with much interest that part of your 
 manuscript entitled 4 Theory of Morse’s Electro-Magnetic Telegraph,’ 
 which you were so kind as to submit to my examination. The allusion 
 you make to ‘ the helix of a soft-iron magnet prepared after the manner 
 first pointed out by Professor Henry,’ gives me an opportunity of which 
 I gladly avail myself, to say that I think justice has not hitherto been 
 done to Professor Henry, either in Europe or this country, for the dis- 
 covery of a scientific fact which in its bearing on telegraphs, whether 
 of the magnetic needle or electro-magnet order, is of the greatest im- 
 portance. . . . Thus was opened the way for fresh efforts in devising 
 
 a practicable electric telegraph ; and Baron Schilling, in 1832, and Pro- 
 fessors Gauss and Weber, in 1833, had ample opportunity to learn of 
 Henry’s discovery, and avail themselves of it, before they constructed 
 tbeir needle telegraphs, t . . . To Professor Henry is unquestionably 
 
 due the honor of the discovery of a fact in science which proves the 
 practicability of exciting magnetism through a long coil or at a distance, 
 either to deflect a needle or magnetize soft iron. . . . 
 
 “With great respect, your obedient servant, 
 
 “Samuel F. B. Morse.” 
 
 This just and honorable recognition was well calculated to reflect an 
 added luster, in the minds of the intelligent, upon Professor Morse’s 
 unquestionable achievements. But the writer a few years later, per- 
 haps embittered by the sweeping constructions placed by hostile ad- 
 vocates upon the enforced statements of Henry (exacted in strongly- 
 contested litigations between rival telegraph inventors or their sustain- 
 ing companies), was unfortunately Jed in evil hour by flattering partisans 
 to undo this gracious work. 
 
 In a pamphlet essay dated Locust Grove, New York, December, 1853, 
 and published in January, 1855, Professor Morse hazarded the intrepid 
 
 * The case of French, vs. Rogers. Respondent’s evidence, p. 199. Quoted by President 
 Felton: Smithsonian Report for 1857, pp. 94, 95. The attention of Professor Morse was 
 in reality not called to Henry’s discovery by Dr. Gale, till a considerable time after it 
 had been successfully applied to the experimental circuits of the infant telegraph. 
 
 t [Schilling’s telegraphic experiments (involving no great length of circuit) were 
 earlier than Henry’s discoveries ; and the expedient of so delicate an indicator as the 
 reflecting galvanometer employed by Gauss and Weber seems to show that tin y had 
 not adapted fully the electric current to the “ intensity” coil, as recommended by 
 Henry. ] 
 
60 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 statement: u First. I certainly shall show that I have not only mani- 
 fested every disposition to give due credit to Professor Henry, hut 
 under the hasty impression that he deserved credit for discoveries in 
 science bearing upon the telegraph, I did actually give him a degree of 
 credit not only beyond what he had received at that time from the scien- 
 tific world, but a degree of credit to which subsequent research has 
 proved him not to be entitled. Secondly. I shall show that I am not 
 indebted to him for any discovery in science bearing on the telegraph ; 
 and that all discoveries of principles having this bearing were made, not 
 by Professor Henry, but by others, and prior to any experiments of Pro- 
 fessor Henry in the science of electro-magnetism.”* 
 
 In the inevitable dilemma thus assumed by the pamphleteer, under 
 the clear light of historic record, it is most charitable not to impugn the 
 writer’s candor. The evidences diligently gathered by him, of electric 
 impulse transmitted to great distances, before the date of Henry’s inves- 
 tigations, certainly seem to show a surprising misconception of the phe- 
 nomena and the principles of electro-magnetism. That with such mis- 
 conception he should fail to appreciate an indebtedness to Henry’s labors, 
 is perhaps not surprising ; but that he should thus ignore the services 
 and statements of his faithful friend and colleague — Professor Gale, his 
 great obligations to whom had been constantly admitted, appears less 
 amenable to explanation or excuse. 
 
 Professor Morse could say with undoubted truth, that not till after the 
 successful working of his invention, had he ever heard of Henry’s re- 
 searches. In his letter to Professor Walker, just above quoted, in refer- 
 ring to the time and the nature of his invention, he wrote : u I was utterly 
 ignorant that the idea of an electric telegraph of any kind whatever, 
 had been conceived by any other person. I took it for granted that the 
 effects I desired could be produced at a distance ; and accordingly in the 
 -confidence of this persuasion, I devised and constructed my apparatus 
 for the purpose. I had never even heard or read of Professor Henry’s 
 experiments, nor did I become acquainted with them until after all my 
 apparatus was constructed and in operation through half a mile of wire? 
 at the Yew York City University, in 1837. I then learned for the first 
 time that an electric telegraph of some kind had been thought of before 
 I had thought of it.” In his pamphlet of January, 1855, he mentions that 
 at the date of Henry’s publication in Silliman’s Journal, he was sojourn- 
 ing in Italy. u From the autumn of tbe year 1829 till the autumn of the 
 year 1832 I was in Europe, principally in Italy. . . . The fact is, it 
 
 did not come to my knowledge until five years after my* return, in 1837.”! 
 
 * A Defence against the injurious deductions drawn from the deposition of Prof. Joseph 
 Henry [in the sever, il telegraph, suits]; by Samuel F. B. Morse, January 1855, p. 8. 
 (See “Supplement,” Note H.) 
 
 t Morse’s Defence against the injurious deductions, etc. (p. 15, and foot-note). Thus 
 while Morse— dreaming only of artistic fame, was assiduously cultivating liis art in 
 Italy, nearly two years before he met with Dr. Jackson on the homeward ship, or be- 
 fore the conception of electric signaling had dawned upon his mind, Henry had an 
 electro-magnetic circuit of a mile, with bell signal, in actual operation at the Albany 
 Academy. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 61 
 
 Professor Gale, when asked in 1856, if lie would give a statement for 
 publication, of the Morse apparatus as originally constructed, and be- 
 fore being modified by himself, promptly responded in a letter dated 
 Washington, April 7, 1856 : u This apparatus was Morse’s original in- 
 strument, usually known as the type apparatus, in which the types, set 
 up in a composing-stick, were run through a circuit-breaker, and in 
 which the battery was the cylinder battery, with a single pair of plates. 
 The sparseness of the wires in the magnet coils, and the use of the single 
 cup battery, were to me on the first look at the instrument, obvious 
 marks of defect, and I accordingly suggested to the professor, without 
 giving my reasons for so doing, that a battery of many pairs should be 
 substituted for that of a single pair, and that the coil on each arm of the 
 magnet should be increased to many hundred turns eacli : which experi- 
 ment (if I remember aright) was made on the same day, with a battery 
 and wire on hand, furnished I believe by myself: and it was found that 
 while the original arrangement would only send the electric current 
 through a few feet of wire, (say from fifteen to forty,) the modified ar- 
 rangement would send it through as many hundred. Although I gave 
 no reasons at the time to Professor Morse for the suggestions I had pro- 
 posed in modifying the arrangement of the machine, I did so afterward; 
 and referred in my explanations to the paper of Professor Henry, in the 
 nineteenth volume of the American Journal of Science. . . . At the 
 
 time I gave the suggestions above named, Professor Morse was not famil- 
 iar with the then existing state of the science of electro -magnetism. Had 
 he been so, or had he read and appreciated the paper of Henry, the sug- 
 gestions made by me would naturally have occurred to his mind, as 
 they did to my own. . . . Professor Morse expressed great surprise 
 
 at the contents of the paper when I showed it to him, but especially 
 at the remarks on Dr. Barlow’s results respecting telegraphing.”* 
 
 In a letter published in the Sunday Chronicle at Washington, in 1872^ 
 Professor Gale (strongly vindicating the propriety of erecting a monu- 
 ment to Professor Morse — not as a Discoverer but as an Inventor,) con- 
 ceded that “ Morse knew nothing of Henry’s discovery when he invented 
 his machine. Henry’s discovery was published in 1831. Five or six years 
 later Morse invented his telegraphic machine, without having seen an 
 account of Henry’s experiments till shown to him by myself.” f And from 
 this consideration he justly exonerates him from the imputation of 
 plagiarism which had been inconsiderately brought against the distin- 
 guished inventor. In a letter addressed to Prof. E. H. Horsford, of 
 Cambridge, Mass., dated Washington, May 18, 1872, the same writer 
 said: “I adapted to Morse’s machine the modification which was taken 
 from Henry’s experiments of 1831. [Properly of 1829, and 1830.] But 
 Morse, not having been accustomed to investigate scientific facts, could 
 not appreciate the investigations of Henry as applicable to the tele- 
 
 * Smithsonian Report for 1857, pp. 92, 93. 
 t Sunday Chronicle, Washington, March 3, 1872. 
 
62 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 graph ; and I presume that Morse never did fully appreciate the benefit 
 which his machine derived from Henry’s discovery.”* 
 
 Professor Morse’s real merit (and his real contribution to telegraphy) 
 consists, first, in the adaptation of the armature of a Henry electro-mag- 
 net to the purpose of a recording instrument, and secondly, in connec- 
 tion therewith, the improvement on the Gauss and Steinheil dual-sign 
 alphabets, (made either by himself, or his assistant, Mr. Vail,) of employ- 
 ing, instead of alternating or vibratory markings, the simple “ dot-and- 
 dash” alphabet in a single line. Whatever may have been the indebt- 
 edness of Professor Morse to Dr. Jackson for the suggestion of the first 
 idea of an “ electric” telegraph, it is quite clear from the incoherent 
 claims of Dr. Jackson himself, that these two really important improve- 
 ments were original with Morse, and were in no sense derived from , 
 Jackson, f 
 
 Claims so moderate, though so meritorious, (as might be supposed) j 
 would scarcely satisfy the ambition of the patentee and his supporters, 
 conscious of the equally meritorious exertion and enterprise by which 
 through tedious ordeals of obstruction and difficulty a great practical 
 success had been achieved, and before whom — in just reward prophetic . 
 visions of a grand commercial monopoly loomed in large perspective, j 
 And thus by ignoring and undervaluing the results accomplished by j 
 those earlier in the field, the owners of the patent exerted themselves to 
 repress competing systems, and to arrogate entire invention and propri- 
 etorship of the electro-magnetic telegraph. 
 
 To the vast majority— suddenly dazzled by so magnificent a culmina- j 
 tion of invention, such claims appeared entirely legitimate ; to the studi- 
 ous few — prepared to discriminate; they appeared as entirely inad missible. j 
 The judicial tribunals— disposed to sustain a vested right with largest and 
 most liberal interpretation, yet pronounced in final appeal such claims i] 
 "Untenable and overstated. | 
 
 To so eminent a pioneer in telegraphy as Henry, perhaps more thanj 
 to any other, must the overweening pretensions of the “ Morse Tele- j 
 graph” have been obvious and untenable; and yet with that impar- 
 tiality of judgment — that rare independency of personal bias which soi 
 marvelously distinguished him, he never permitted himself to under- 
 estimate Morse’s true merits, nor did he abstain from defending them 
 with a heartiness probably greater than was accorded by any of his sci- 
 entific compeers. For Professor Morse personally he felt a sympathetic. 
 
 duced. § 
 
 * Memorial of Samuel F. B. Morse. (Meeting in Faneuil Hall.) Boston, 1872, p. 37. 
 f These two features so impressed the candid Steinheil, the foremost of telegraplieis, 
 as to lead him at once to accept them as great improvements on his own ingenious 
 method of recording, and to urge at once their substitution. 
 
 X See “ Supplement,” Note I. 
 
 § See “ Supplement,” Note J. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 63 
 
 u Relay” and “ receiving” circuits. — The somewhat controverted ques- 
 tion as to the true origin of the relay system of electrical communica- 
 tion has been purposely reserved for a concluding discussion. Though 
 unquestionably a valuable adjunct in distant intercourse, the “ relay ” 
 is not here treated as an essential feature of the electric telegraph, since 
 land-lines of 600 miles, and by the ocean system cables of 2,000 miles, 
 are easily made operative in a single stretch or circuit. 
 
 Henry’s original contrivance of a special compound circuit in 1835, 
 (already noticed,) by nouneans precluded an equally original invention 
 by Professor Morse some years later of a different arrangement of con- 
 joined circuits. Nor is it at all surprising that a combination (in itself 
 sufficiently obvious) should spontaneously occur to several minds if so 
 circumstanced as to feel a need for it. There is reason to believe that 
 Morse, like Wheatstone, independently invented his application of the 
 general idea, and probably about the same time, in the spring of 1837.* 
 
 To do justice however to each party, it is all-important to discrimi- 
 nate carefully between the actual results attained by each. Henry had 
 simply the philosophic plan of employing a weak magnetic power to act 
 as a distant trigger for a great magnetic power, (one therefore of short 
 circuit,) — and there stop.t Wheatstone, employing a delicate arrange- 
 ment of silent galvanometer needle at the distant station, felt the neces- 
 sity of promptly calling attention to the visual signal by an audible 
 alarm; hence this feeble power was used also as the trigger to bring 
 into action a much shorter and more powerful electro-magnetic circuit, 
 — but merely as a call , and there stop. Morse, requiring a stronger sig- 
 naling duty (in the use of a recording lever) than the length of the 
 circuit would probably permit, conceived the idea of a division of the 
 circuit into several shorter ones ; each successive circuit to be of the same 
 hind as the preceding. He thus first produced a true “relay,’’ and this 
 too without a knowledge of anything similar having been previously 
 exhibited by Professor Henry as a lecture-room experiment before his 
 college classes. It may therefore be affirmed that Henry, feeling no 
 occasion for extending a telegraphic line, had probably no idea of a 
 “relay,” properly so called, when he first devised his combination of an 
 “intensity” circuit with a “quantity” circuit; that Professor Morse, by 
 his own declaration, had certainly no conception of a local receiving 
 “ quantity ” magnet when subsequently he first devised his combination 
 of a series of equal “intensity” circuits; and that Wheatstone had as 
 little idea of either a “receiving” or a “relay” magnet when (in con- 
 
 * It even appears (from the unfortunate controversy between Messrs. Cooke and 
 Wheatstone as to the priority and value of their respective contributions) that the two 
 English copartners each independently invented the “relay” alarum. ( Professor 
 Wheatstone's Answer to Mr. Cooke’s pamphlet. Republished in Cooke’s “ Electric Tele- 
 graph ,” etc. part i, p. 55, foot-note.) 
 
 t “My object in the process described by me was to bring into operation a large 
 ‘quantity’ magnet connected with a ‘quantity’ battery in a local circuit, by means of 
 a small ‘intensity’ magnet, and an ‘intensity’ battery at a distance.” ( Smithsonian 
 Report for 1857, p. 112.) 
 
64 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 junction with Cooke) he devised a “quantity” circuit supplementary to 
 his “intensity” circuit for the sole purpose of calling “attention.” 
 
 Professor Morse in his answer to the twelfth cross-interrogatory (in his 
 deposition taken February 6, 7, and 8, 1851), in the case of “ B. B. French 
 and others vs. H. J. Bogers and others,” has made the following state- 
 ment : “If by the question is sought the date of my invention of break- 
 ing and closing one circuit by another, I answer in 1830 [ ? ]. I exhibited 
 the same in operation [?] in the spring of 1837. If by the question is 
 sought the date of my invention of a short circuit to be used at the ex- 
 tremities of the line, I answer in May of 1844. If by the question is 
 sought the date of a still greater improvement, to wit, that of placing 
 short circuits on the margin (so to speak) of the main line, all of them to 
 be operated simultaneously, I answer that the idea of such an improve- 
 ment first presented itself to my mind in the beginning of the year 
 1844.* . . . The short circuits at the extremity of the main line were 
 
 first used on the line between Washington and Baltimore, in May, 1844.” t 
 
 These deliberate statements of Professor Morse distinguish very explic- 
 itly between the “relay” of magnets for “breaking and closing one cir- 
 cuit by another,” and the “receiving” magnet of “a short circuit at the 
 extremities of the line.” And as a fact of public record, Morse patented 
 the first of these devices June 20, 1840; (No. 1647 ;') while he did not pat- 
 ent the latter device (the “ receiving ” magnet of a local circuit) till about 
 six years later, April 11, 1846 : (No. 4453.) 
 
 On the same subject, Professor Gale has stated in his deposition : 
 “ The said Morse always expressed his confidence of success in propa- 
 gating magnetic power through any distance of electric conductors which 
 circumstances might render desirable. His plan was thus often ex- 
 plained to me. Suppose (said Professor Morse) that in experimenting 
 on twenty miles of wire we should find that the power of magnetism is 
 so feeble that it will but move a lever with certainty but a hair’s breadth; 
 that would be insufficient it may be to write or print, yet it would be 
 sufficient to close and break another or a second circuit twenty miles 
 farther ; and this second circuit could in the same manner be made to 
 break and close a third circuit twenty miles farther ; and so on around 
 the globe.” 
 
 This is a very clear presentation of the “ relay ” of circuits. But with 
 a slight confusion of idea Dr. Gale proceeds : “This general statement 
 of the means to be resorted to, now embraced in what is called the 1 re- 
 ceiving magnet J to render practical — writing or printing by telegraph 
 through long distances, was shoAvn to me more in detail early in the 
 spring of the year 1837.” To the same effect, nearly a quarter of a 
 
 * [Steinheil, in 1837 (seven years earlier), had adapted his registering galvanometer 
 “to repeat and render permanent at all parts of the chain where an apparatus like that 
 above described is inserted,” the information transmitted to the terminus. (Sturgeon’s 
 Annals of Electricity , etc. April, 1839, vol. iii, p. 520.)] 
 
 t Deposition of Samuel F. B. Morse , Circuit Court of the United States for the eastern 
 district of Pennsylvania, April session, 1850, No. 104, “ Complainant’s Evidence,” pp. 
 182, 183. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 65 
 
 century later, Dr. Gale states that “ Before lines of telegraph were set 
 up, it was anticipated that in long lines the ordinary current of 
 electricity might not be strong enough to work the magnet at such dis- 
 tance, so as to write, but would be so strong as to open and close a side 
 or local circuit, as suggested by Professor Henry. This mode of using 
 one electric circuit and magnet to open and close another electric circuit 
 (either for extending the main circuit to greater distances or to operate 
 any local circuit), although not in the machine when I first saw it, was 
 discussed in an early part of 1837, before any lines had been constructed.”* 
 
 In both these accounts, Professor Gale has inadvertently (though not 
 unnaturally) confounded together two entirely distinct inventions, in- 
 volving different arrangements and purposes; — the “relay ” circuit and 
 magnet (of the “ intensity” order), and the “ receiving ” circuit and mag- 
 net (of the “quantity” order) ;• although Professor Morse himself dis- 
 tinctly declared he had no conception of the latter arrangement in 1837, 
 having invented it “ in May of 1841.” 
 
 While the first invention of the special application called the “relay” 
 is thus unhesitatingly ascribed to Professor Morse, the practically much 
 more important arrangement of the terminal or local short circuit “ quan- 
 tity ” magnet for reinforcing the power of the “ intensity ” magnet, must 
 as unhesitatingly be claimed for Henry ; and as an invention several 
 years prior to that of Morse, it would by . the well-known principles of 
 patent-law, have generically subordinated the special application of the 
 latter. Although Henry did not technically “perfect the invention,” it 
 remains none the less true that every “receiving magnet ” in use through- 
 out our own and other countries is but the obvious application of Hen- 
 ry’s experimental junction of the two circuits, exhibited eleven years 
 before it entered into Professor Morse’s patent of April 11, 1846. 
 
 As indicative of the relative importance of these two inventions, — the 
 Henry “receiving” magnet and the Morse “ relay” of circuits, it may 
 be stated that on the extended lines of the “ Western Union Telegraph 
 Company,” there are now 13,745 of the former in actual operation, and 
 only 228 of the latter; being 60 of the Henry “ receivers” for each of 
 the Morse “ repeaters.” And in remarkable confirmation of Henry’s 
 early anticipations of the capacity of his “intensity” magnet to be 
 operated under judicious conditions directly through a distance of sev- 
 eral hundred miles, it is the “ accomplished fact” to-day that numerous 
 single circuits ranging from 500 to 600 miles in length, are in actual use 
 in the United States, operated by his magnet. The telegraph-line from 
 New York to New Orleans, (upward of 1,500 miles,) is worked in three 
 links or circuits (connected by two relays or repeaters) ; the last circuit, 
 from Chattanooga, Tenn. to New Orleans, La. being 638 miles long, f 
 
 * Memorial of S. F. B. Morse, Washington, 1875, p. 19. On the question of the date 
 of Professor Morse’s ‘‘Relay”, see ’“Supplement,” Note K. 
 
 t These interesting facts are communicated by the accomplished telegraphic expert, 
 Mr Frank L. Pope (of the Western Union Telegraph Company), a vice-president of the 
 American Electrical Society: author of “Modern Practice of the Electric Telegraph:” 
 &c. 
 
 5 E T 
 
66 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Among examples of u magnetic 77 telegraphs which might properly here 
 receive a passing notice, are the four following : 
 
 1837. The so-called u mechanical 77 or clironometric telegraph of Mr. 
 William F. Cooke, of London, comprising two synchronously revolving 
 cylinders (or escapements) at the two stations, arrested simultaneously 
 by a magnetic armature detent, somewhat after the general principle of 
 Ronalds 7 s synchronous dials of 1816, previously mentioned. This form 
 of dial telegraph was worked by Mr. Cooke in April, 1837.* 
 
 1837. The first letter-printing telegraifii, devised by Mr. Alfred Vail, 
 of New Jersey, in September, 1837, comprising a printing-wheel pro- 
 vided with spring type for the letters of the alphabet, projecting radi- 
 ally from its periphery, and corresponding with the teeth of an escape- 
 ment wheel on the same shaft or axis, driven by ordinary clock-work, and 
 regulated by a pendulum. The pendulum oscillating as a free armature 
 between two electro-magnets, was arrested by one of the magnets when 
 the desired letter was reached, and another electro-magnet, with lever 
 armature, simultaneously drew down the spring type of the letter- wheel 
 upon the fillet of paper beneath it.t This ingenious arrangement like 
 the dial telegraph of Ronalds, and that of Cooke (independently con- 
 trived but a short time previously), required a synchronous movement 
 of the clocks and their pendulums at the two stations. Eighteen years 
 later, a printing telegraph on the same principle was very successfully 
 worked out and operated by Mr. David E. Hughes, of Kentucky. 
 
 1838. The electro-magnetic chemical telegraph of Mr. Edward Davy, 
 of London, comprising a chemically marking or recording cylinder, op- 
 erated by a clock-work escapement and the armature of an electro-mag. 
 net. Relays of circuits were also included, operated by a galvanometer 
 needle.| 
 
 1839. The dial telegraph of Prof. Charles Wheatstone, of London, 
 
 completed by him in November, 1839, comprising an escapement and 
 index operated by the step-motion of an electro-magnetic armature. In 
 this arrangement, the synchronous motions and indicating positions 
 on the terminal dials were effected entirely by the specific number of 
 galvanic impulses given to the transmitting and receiving escapements. § 
 The principle of this transmission was in 1846, skillfully and success- 
 fully applied by Mr. Royal E. House, of Vermont, to a u printing tele- 
 graph^ 7 
 
 * “ Mr. Cooke’s Case,” before the arbitrators. The Electric Telegraph, etc. by W. F- 
 Cooke, part ii, p. 23. It appears that this arrangement was devised by Mr. Cooke in 
 1836. 
 
 t The American Electro-magnetic Telegraph, by Alfred Vail, 1845, pp. 159-171. 
 
 JTlie English patent of Edward Davy, July 4, 1838, No. 7719, 
 
 § “Professor Wheatstone’s Case,” before the arbitrators, in 1840, p. 101. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 67 
 
 GENERAL SUMMARY. 
 
 From the foregoing* partial history of the origin and development of 
 the electro magnetic telegraph, it is sufficiently demonstrated that its 
 successful introduction has been effected by a considerable number of 
 independent contributions. The leading preparatory investigations and 
 discoveries which opened the way for the telegraph, (though with no 
 such utilitarian end in view,) may be held to be 
 
 1st: The discovery of galvanic electricity by Galvani (1786-1790 ). 
 
 2d: The galvanic or voltaic battery by Yolta (1800). 
 
 3d: The directive influence of the galvanic current on a magnetic 
 needle by Eomagnosi (1802), and by Oersted (1820). 
 
 4th: The galvanometer by Schweigger (1820), the parent of the needle 
 system. 
 
 5th: The electro-magnet by Arago and Sturgeon (1820-1825), the par- 
 ent of the magnet system. 
 
 Passing these, the next most important series of steps in the evolu- 
 tion of our present system of telegraphy, and having a more or less con- 
 scious reference thereto, are : 
 
 First, and most vital: Henry’s discovery in 1829, and 1830, of the 66 in. 
 tensity” or spool- wound magnet, and its intimate relation to the u inten- 
 sity ” battery ; whereby its excitation could be effected to a great distance 
 through a very long conducting- wire.* 
 
 Second : Gauss’s improvement in 1833, (or probably Schilling’s improve- 
 ment considerably earlier,) of reducing the electric conductors to a single 
 circuit, by the ingenious application of a dual sign so combined as to 
 produce a true alphabet.! 
 
 Third: Weber’s discovery in 1833, that the conducting wires of an 
 electric telegraph could be efficiently carried through the air, without 
 any insulation except at their points of support. 
 
 Fourth: As a valuable adjunct to telegraphy, Daniell’s invention of a 
 
 constant” galvanic battery in 1836. 
 
 Fifth : Steinheil’s remarkable discovery in 1837, that the earth may 
 form the returning half of a closed galvanic circuit, so that a single con- 
 ducting-wire is sufficient for all telegraphic purposes. 
 
 Sixth : Morse’s adaptation of the armature of a Henry electro magnet 
 as a recording instrument in 1837, $ gind in connection therewith the irn- 
 
 *Subordinated to tliis important step, the use of the armature as the signaling de- 
 vice and the first adoption of an acoustic signal might be mentioned. If Morse’s 
 “relay” be judged by any as of sufficient importance to rank with the more essential 
 elements, then Henry’s earlier and still more important device of the terminal short 
 circuit magnet of “ quantity” must not be overlooked. 
 
 tThe probable anticipations of this, — by Lomond in 1787, by Cavallo in 1795, and by 
 Dyar in 1825, — are here neglected, as neither sufficiently definite, nor as perhaps prac- 
 tically influential on the progress of telegraphy ; though this recurrence of idea should 
 certainly not be lost sight of in any history of the origins of inventions. 
 
 t September of 1837 is fixed upon as the earliest date on which an actual register of 
 intelligible signs was made by Professor Morse. (New York Journal of Commerce , Sep- 
 tember 7, 1837.) These signs were not alphabetical , but were zig-zag markings repre- 
 senting numerals. 
 
68 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 provement in 1838, on tlie Schilling, Gauss, and Steinheil alphabets, of 
 employing instead of alternating signs (as in his first register), the simple 
 “ dot-and-dash” alphabet in a single line.* 
 
 As displaying the u movement of an age,” it is interesting to observe 
 that these six capital steps were all effected within the fruitful period ot 
 a single decade. If we except the first of these — the inaugurating ad- 
 vance, without which no electro-magnetic telegraph would have been 
 practicable,! it will probably be difficult for the impartial historian to 
 award to the succeeding five contributions their respective value and 
 just desert. 
 
 The earlier needle type of the electro -magnetic telegraph, as developed 
 by Schilling and by Gauss, has found its special and appropriate appli- 
 cation in extended ocean-lines ; and indeed without such development, 
 it is doubtful whether we could have had a transatlantic telegraph. 
 It is well for the exclusive partisans of the “American system” to 
 reflect that in the operation of these submarine cables there enters no 
 element of Morse’s instrument. The receiving and indicating mechanism 
 devised by Gauss and Weber, and introduced some ten years earlier, is 
 essentially that in use to-day on either shore of the Atlantic Ocean. 
 The signals of the earlier invention are equal right and left deflections 
 of an exceedingly delicate reflecting galvanometer ; the signals of the 
 later invention are the unequal contacts of an electro-magnetic arm- 
 ature. 
 
 Many other telegraphic developments — not within the object of this 
 summary, such as the Various modifications of the galvanometer system, 
 the ingenious arrangements of dial indicators, and above all — as most 
 ingenious of all — the printing telegraphs, (originating as we have seen, 
 with Alfred Vail,) present what may be called highly organized 
 varieties of the art; but varieties which notwithstanding the rare 
 order of inventive intelligence expended upon them, and the great 
 value jmssbssed by them in special applications, do not promise to 
 exercise a corresponding influence upon the future of telegraphy. The 
 wonders of multiplex telegraphy (the simultaneous transmission of two 
 or even four or more communications in either direction over the same 
 wife), and of vocal telegraphy (the transmutation and transmission of 
 human speech by electric waves in the telephone), lie still more beyond 
 the scope of this review. 
 
 In conclusion, an early averment in this historic sketch, as to “ the 
 growth of the electric telegraph,” may be repeated in the language of a 
 later writer. u The history of the subject thus far shows us that no 
 single individual can justly claim the distinction of having been the 
 
 * Professor Morse’s first use of tlie alphabet was made in January, 1838. (New York 
 Journal of Commerce, January 29, 1838; also Prime’s Life of Morse , 8vo, New York, 
 1875, p. 331.) On the subject of “Alphabetic notation” see “ Supplement,” Note L. 
 
 tWheatstone himself does not appear to have fully realized the significance and value 
 of Henry’s researches till 1837. The simple electro-chemical telegraph might have 
 been successfully developed without the discovery of the “intensity” magnet, and 
 may yet prove in practice a formidable competitor with it. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 G 9 
 
 inventor of the electric telegraph. It was in fact a growth , rather than 
 an invention , the work of many brains, and of many hands.” (Pres- 
 cott’s Electricity and the Electric Telegraph, 1877, chap, xxix, p. 420.) 
 
 But amid the galaxy of brilliant names who prepared the success and 
 organized the triumph for the execution of skillful artisans, none 
 stands higher, or shines with more resplendent luster, than that of 
 
 JOSEPH HENRY. 
 
SUPPLEMENT. 
 
 NOTE A. (From p. 6.) 
 
 THE WORTH OF ABSTRACT RESEARCH. 
 
 Tl^e eminent natural philosopher Dr. Thomas Young, has well remarked: “No dis- 
 covery however remote in its nature from the subjects of daily observation, can with 
 reason he declared wholly inapplicable to the benefit of mankind. . . . Those 
 
 who possess the genuine spirit of scientific investigation and who have tasted the pure 
 satisfaction arising from an advancement in intellectual acquirements, are contented 
 to proceed in their researches without inquiring at every step what they gain by their 
 newly discovered lights, and to what practical purposes they are applicable. They 
 receive a sufficient gratification from the enlargement of their views of the constitution 
 of the universe, and experience in the immediate pursuit of knowledge that pleasure 
 which others wish to obtain more circuitously by its means.”* 
 
 In a similar spirit, Oersted expressed his clear perception in an anniversary address 
 delivered in 1814, before the University of Copenhagen, that “The real laborer in 
 science chooses knowledge as his highest aim. A love of knowledge, (which some are 
 frequently obliged to place secondary to other duties,) with the man of science must 
 be the occupation of his life ; he is dedicated to nourish the holy flame of wisdom 
 which shall diffuse its rays amidst the rest of mankind ; it is his nightly lamp which 
 shall enlighten .the earth.” t 
 
 And with no less earnestness and force, our own Henry declared : “ While we rejoice 
 that in our country above all others so much attention is paid to the diffusion of 
 knowledge, truth compels us to say that comparatively little encouragement is given 
 to its increase. ... As soon as any branch of science can be brought to bear on 
 the necessities, conveniences, or luxuries of life, it meets with encouragement and 
 reward. Not so with the discovery of the incipient principles of science : the investi- 
 gations which lead to these receive no fostering care from the government, and are 
 considered by the superficial observer as trifles unworthy the attention of those who 
 place the supreme good in that which immediately administers to the physical needs 
 or luxuries of life. But he who loves truth for its own sake, feels that its highest 
 claims are lowered and its moral influence marred by being continually summoned 
 to the bar of immediate and palpable utility.” $ 
 
 In a jdea for the endowment of abstract science, William Swainson, the naturalist, 
 justly observes: “If the depths of science are to be fathomed, and new discoveries 
 brought to light, the task can only be achieved by those whose time is at their own 
 command, whose attention is not divided or distracted by avocations purely worldly, 
 and whose circumstances are such as to make them free from pecuniary cares. Tal- 
 ents fitting their possessors for such speculations must be of a high order, and they 
 are consequently rare : § yet still more rare it is to find superadded to them the gifts 
 of fortune. From whom then if abstract science is to be fostered and rewarded, is 
 
 * Lectures on Natural Philosophy , lect. i, vol. i, p. 2. 
 
 t The Soul in Nature. Bohn’s Scientific Library, 1852, p. 141. 
 
 X Smithsonian Report for 1853, p. 8. 
 
 [§ Dr. Peter Mark Koget has well observed: “Important discoveries in science seem 
 often to arise from accident; but on closer examination it is found that they always 
 imply the exercise of profound thought. As the fertility of the soil is essential to the 
 germination and growth of the seed which the wind may have scattered on its surface, 
 so it is principally from the qualities of mind in the observer that an observation de- 
 rives its value and may be made eventually to expand into an important branch of 
 scimce.” ( Galvanism , 8vo, London, 1832, chap, i, p. 1.)] 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 71 
 
 this encouragement to come ? Certainly not from the public ; for what the multitude 
 cannot appreciate they cannot he expected to reward. If indeed the speculations of 
 the philosopher can he turned into immediate advantage by the manufacturer or the 
 merchant, the inventor is in a fair way of dividing profits with the applier ; hut we 
 are not at present considering such cases. . . . That discoveries which event- 
 
 ually have proved extensively applicable to commerce were never so suspected when 
 their first rudiments were developed, is too notorious to he disputed ; for the discovery 
 and the application of a new principle require very different powers of mind. . . . 
 
 It is a maxim of the vulgar to esteem every requirement of this sort in proportion 
 to the direct benefit it confers on their own interests.”* * * § 
 
 It is indeed too true that the prosecution of scientific truth for truth’s sake only, 
 is popularly held in little favor, and instead of receiving assistance, is even unblush- 
 ingly decried by the would-be leaders of industrial opinion. Taking no lessons from 
 the splendid triumphs of the past, which constantly assure us that the discovery of 
 one age — naked and unprized, is the necessary foundation for the invention of the 
 next, intelligent editors still repeat the annual cry in superior judgment on the pro- 
 ceedings of learned associations, “Dispense, gentlemen, with these barren and unin- 
 teresting papers, and give us something 1 practical.’ ” 
 
 The average citizen, professing a patronizing admiration of “ science,” is able per- 
 ' haps to appreciate the physics of machinery, and the chemistry of manufactures. 
 Eager for the rewards which may be 'won from nature by her students, he would gladly 
 be taught some new magneto-electric process for converting cellulose into bread, or 
 t( oleomargarine” into butter; and yet in ignorant ingratitude, would as gladly mo- 
 nopolize the very thunderbolt, when Science once has forged it for the use of Art.t 
 
 But let those incapable of conceiving a higher utility than the material, at least ex- 
 ercise that prudent reason they so much vaunt, and at least endeavor to secure for 
 that self-interest they so diligently pursue, the character of an enlightened policy. The 
 unpromising preparation for a possible magnetic telegraph was quietly advanced by a 
 fine succession of earnest students (little known or respected by the multitude), who 
 never paused to query “ the use of it,” and who (it is safe to say) would never have 
 accomplished their beneficent mission had their investigations been directly prompted 
 by the inspirations of a mercenary interests It may be confidently proclaimed as a firm 
 induction from all our past knowledge, that so intimately bound together is the entire 
 framework and system of the world, that no extension of our observation of the phe- 
 nomena of nature and of our insight into the laws of nature (which are the laws of 
 God), is not either a direct advancement in physical power and well-being, or a neces- 
 sary stepping-stone to other truths which shall prove such. 
 
 “ Scientific researches are often supposed by the uninformed to be of little or no real 
 importance, and indeed are frequently ridiculed as barren of all practical utility. But 
 nothing is more mistaken than this. The most valuable and productive of the arts of life, 
 the most important and wonder-working inventions of modern times, owe their being 
 and value to scientific investigations. By these have been discovered physical truths 
 and laws, the intelligent application of which to practical inventions has given im- 
 "mense benefits to the world. The germs of these valuable improvements and inventions 
 have been found and developed by scientific research, — the original forms of which have 
 “often seemed to the many to be as idle and useless as they were curious.” $ 
 
 *Swainson, On the Study of Natural History (Cabinet Cyclopaedia), part iv, chap, ii, 
 sects. 244, 245, pp. 354-357. 
 
 t “ Science has scattered her material benefits so lavishly whenever she has been in 
 presence, that no small number of her followers and all the multitude have left off 
 gazing on the resplendency of her countenance, in their eager scramble for her gifts.” 
 (Quarterly Review, June, 1841, vol. lixviii, p. 185.) 
 
 + Of those attempting the interrogation of nature “on account of the advantage and 
 benefit to be derived from it,” it may be said in Bacon’s happy simile : “ Like Atalanta, 
 they leave the course to pick up the golden apple, interrupting their speed and giving 
 up the victory.” (Novum Organum, book i, aphorism 70, Bohn’s edition, 1858, p. 407.) 
 
 § Report of special committee of the Board of Regents, on the distribution of the 
 income of the Smithsonian fund. Smithsonian Report for 1853, p. 86. 
 
72 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 And to the same effect let us quote in conclusion a few of Henry’s urgent utterances. 
 “ Every well-established truth is an addition to the sum of human power ; and though 
 it nftay not find an immediate application to the economy of every-day life, we may 
 safely commit it to the stream of time, in the confident anticipation that the world 
 will not fail to realize its beneficial results!”* * * § 
 
 “ Unfortunately there has always been in England and in this country a tendency 
 to undervalue the advantages of profound thought, and to regard with favor only 
 those investigations which are immediately applicable to the wants of the present 
 hour. But it should be recollected that the scientific principles which at one period 
 appear of no practical value, and are far removed from popular appreciation, at another 
 time in the further development of the subject, become the means of individual pros- 
 perity and of national w-ealth.”t 
 
 “ The progress of society and the increase of the comfort and happiness of the human 
 family depend as a basis on the degree of our knowledge of the laws by which Di- 
 vine wisdom conducts the affairs of the universe. He has created us with rational 
 souls, and endowed us with faculties to comprehend in some measure the modes in 
 which the operations of nature are effected ; and just in proportion to the advance we 
 make by patient and persevering study in the knowledge of those modes or laws, are 
 we enabled to apply the forces of nature to our own use and to avert the dangers to 
 which we are exposed from our ignorance of their varied influences. Nearly all the 
 great inventions which distinguish the present century, are the results immediately 
 or remotely of the application of scientific principles to practical purposes; and in 
 most cases these applications have been suggested by the student of nature, -whose 
 primary object was the discovery of abstract truth. The statement, cannot be too 
 often repeated, that each branch of knowledge is connected with every other, and 
 that no light can be gained in regard to one which is not reflected upon all. Thus re- 
 searches which at first sight appear the farthest removed from useful application, are 
 in time found to have an important bearing on the advancement of art, and conse- 
 quently on the progress of society. » 
 
 u The world generally has failed to recognize the importance of abstract scientific 
 truths. Although these truths constitute the most important elements of modern 
 civilization, since they give man power and control over the inherent forces of nature, 
 and enable him to render these the obedient slaves of his will, — yet there is even at 
 this time, no country (however intelligent it may appear in other respects) that has 
 made adequate provision for the discovery and development of these important princi- 
 ples. Ӥ 
 
 NOTE B. (From p. It!.) 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE GALVANOMETER. 
 
 In 1808, Johann Solomon Christian Sehweigger, professor of natural philosophy at 
 Nuremberg, and afterward at Halle, published a memoir “ On the employment of the 
 magnetic force for measuring the electrical.” From the somewhat obscure descrip- 
 tion it appears however that the instrument he had devised was simply an “ electro- 
 scope ” for indicating the static repulsion of ordinary ®r mechanical electricity; the 
 magnetic needle, armed at each end with a brass button, being mounted on an insu- 
 lated stand or pivot, and used as .a substitute for the torsion electrometer of Coulomb. |; 
 This arrangement therefore involved no principle of the galvanometer. 
 
 In 1811, De la Rive, in a letter to the editors of the “ Bibiiotli&que Britannique,” 
 recounting some experiments, applied the term “galvanometer” to an instrument for 
 
 * Smithsonian Report for 1856, p. 20. 
 
 t Agricultural Report of Commissioner of Patents for 1857, p. 420. 
 
 t Smithsonian Report for 1859, pp. 14, 15. 
 
 § Smithsonian Report for 1866, p. 16. 
 
 II Gehlen’s Journal fur die Chemie und PhysiJc, 8vo, Berlin, 1808, vol. vii, pp. 206-208.. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 73 
 
 measuring the quantity of tlie^ galvanic current by its decomposing energy. * Dr. 
 Scliweigger, in a notice of this paper, remarked that he had previously measured 
 the battery force by the quantity of gases evolved from water in a given interval, t 
 These experiments likewise, have evidently no relation to tlin present use of the term 
 ‘ ‘Galvanometer. ” 
 
 Nine years earlier than this however, (or six years before Schweigger’s needle elec- 
 trometer,) the galvanic deflection of the magnetic needle had been distinctly observed 
 and accurately recorded. For more than a century, repeated endeavors had been made 
 to discover some relation between the magnetic and the electric attractions and repul- 
 sions, or to unite them by a single law. In 1774, a prize was offered by the Academy 
 of Bavaria for the best examination of and dissertation on the question, “Is there a 
 real and physical analogy between electric and magnetic forces ?” Professor J. H. Van 
 Swinden, of Franeker, Holland, one of the successful competitors, supported the con- 
 clusion that the similaritiesfwere entirely superficial, and that the two powers were 
 essentially different in kind. On the other hand, Professors Steiclehner and Hubner 
 contended that analogies so curious must imply a single agent, t 
 
 But the true reaction between these agencies could not well be exhibited until after 
 1800, when Yolta devised his galvanic battery ; which for the first time enabled physi- 
 cists to employ a continuous electric current. Gian Domenico Romagnosi, a native of 
 Northern Italy, a celebrated publicist and author of several works on historical, legal, 
 and political philosophy, was led near the close of the last century to occupy himself for 
 several years with scientific investigations. The electrical problem attracted his at- 
 tention, and after varied experiments with the aid of the new galvanic appliance, 
 his versatile activity was partly rewarded ; he being first of physical inquirers to make 
 the capital discovery of the singular directive influence exerted by the galvanic cur- 
 rent on a magnetic needle. This new phenomenon — of which he could not anticipate 
 the importance or the consequnces, was announced in the “Gazzdtta di Trento” of 
 August 3, 1802, an Italian newspaper published at Trent, in which city he had for 
 many years resided. $ If the channel of ^publication for a contribution to science of 
 such value was unfortunate, the account was at least republished in forms better suited 
 to arrest attention from the learned. 
 
 In a work of some note and merit, entitled “ Essai Tlidoretique et Experimental sur 
 le Galv anisine,” by Prof. Giovanni Aldini (a nephew of Galvani), quarto, published at 
 Paris in 1804, the author, at page 191, alluding to the sujiposed magnetic influence of 
 a galvanic circuit, states, “ This new property of galvanism has been confirmed by M. 
 Romanesi, a physicist of Trent, who lias observed that galvanism produces a declina- 
 tion of the magnetic needle.” This work was republished shortly afterward in two 
 volumes octavo. 
 
 In the “ Bibliotlieque Universelle” (Sect. Sciences et Arts), January, 1821, (shortly 
 after Oersted’s announcement,) at page 75, attention is called to Aldini’s Treatise on 
 Galvanism, and the passage above given is quoted. The same notice and citation are 
 also published in Gilbert’s “Annalen der Pliysik,” 1821, vol. lxviii, page 208. 
 
 * Bibliotlieque Britannique, for February, 1811, vol. xlvi. 
 
 1 “On a Galvanometer.” Schweigger’s Journal fur Cliemie und Pliysik, 8vo, Nurnberg, 
 1811, vol. ii, part 4, pp. 424-434. 
 
 + Notwithstanding the plausibility of this supposition, it remains to the present day 
 entirely unconfirmed. The conclusion of Van Swinden was correct. Theonly approach 
 to a closer analogy since obtained, is the remarkable fact discovered by Ampere 
 in 1820, that two insulated wires, free to move, through which electricity is flowing 
 in the same direction, attract each other like two dissimilar magnetic poles ; and that 
 they repel each other when their currents are reversed, like two similar magnetic poles. 
 But the differences between these forms of attraction are still so radical, as to incline 
 some physicists to the opinion that the one (that of magnetism) is inherent and in- 
 destructible, and the other (that of electricity) is a merely kinetic or dynamic phe- 
 nomenon : while others would regard the two as both kinetic. 
 
 $ Romagnosi was chief-justice at Trent, from 1791 to 1794 ; and in December of 1802, 
 not long after his scientific achievement, he was made professor of law in the Uni- 
 versity of Parma. 
 
74 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 In a still more popular work on galvanism, by Prof. Joseph Iza'rn, entitled “ Manuel 
 du Galvanisme,” etc. octavo, published at Paris, in 1805, in section ix, at page 120, it 
 is also stated : “According to the observations of Romagnosi, a physicist of Trent, a 
 magnetic needle being submitted to a galvanic current undergoes a declination.” This : 
 work is referred to in a discussion by Mr. Latimer Clark, of London.* Lastly, in the 
 memoir of Romagnosi contained in the “Nouvelle Biographie G6n<5rale” (edited by 
 Hcefer), vol. xlii, pages 574, 575, it is mentioned, “ He discovered the deviation of the 
 magnetic needle by galvanism.” 
 
 Although this pregnant discovery of Romagnosi appears to have been known both 
 to Dr. Soemmering and to Baron Schilling in 1815, yet to neither of them did it sug- 
 gest any applicability to the purpose of telegraphy. Dr. Hamel, of St. Petersburg, in 
 his interesting account of the early history of the telegraph, informs us : “I have been 
 endeavoring to find out from the papers of Soemmering whether he and Baron Schilling 
 might have had a knowledge of the Italian Gian-Domeniao Romagnosi’s important dis- 
 covery made many years ago, that the magnetic needle deviates from its normal direc- 
 tion when under the influence of the galvanic current, and of which he had published 
 an account in a newspaper at Trent on the 3d of August, 1802. ... I found that 
 
 Baron Schilling, immediately, after his return to Munich in 1815, communicated to 
 Soemmering the little book, ‘Manuel du Galvanisme/ by Joseph Izarn, professor of 
 natural philosophy at the Lyc 6 e Bonaparte, which was printed in Paris in 1805, and 
 in which, on page 120, mention is made of Romagnosi’s discovery. I have also seen a 
 note from Soemmering mentioning that he had read this treatise with attention. I 
 came however to the conclusion that neither to Soemmering nor to Baron Schilling, had 
 any idea of a practical application of Romagnosi’s observation presented itself.” t Nor 
 -is this at all surprising : for the similar discovery and announcement by Oersted in 1820, 
 would just as little have suggested any practical method of communicating intelligence 
 to a distance. And indeed had the experiment been attempted, it would have resulted 
 .n absolute failure. It needed the keen brains and active hands ot a succession of pro- 
 found investigators, — of Schweigger, and Ampere, and Arago, and Sturgeon, and 
 Henry, — to develop fully the twofold capacity of electro-magnetism. 
 
 To the natural inquiry why the very same announcement which— made at the be- 
 ginning of the century — fell as it were “still-born,” should when again made eighteen 
 years later, have sprung into so exuberant and active a vitality, the answer seems to 
 be,— first, the greater care taken by Oersted, the later husbandman, to scatter the seed 
 broadcast over Europe ; | and secondly, the riper condition of the intellectual soil, 
 at the later Spring. Romagnosi’s work would seem to have been prematurely attempt- 
 ed ; while Oersted’s, no more meritorious, had the good fortune to be taken up and 
 fostered by still more scrutinizing coadjutors: and thus while the early sowing fell 
 by the wayside or in stony places, the later sowing fell on good ground, well pre- 
 pared 5 and there speedily followed at the hands of a diligent band of laborers an 
 abundant and most precious harvest. 
 
 Tlie question may possibly arise, could Oersted have probably had any intimation 
 of Romagnosi’s earlier cultivation of the same field ? Considering how little the lat- 
 ter name is known among scientific men to-day, the question may be confidently 
 answered in the negative. Dr. Hamel however has ventured the severe judgment : 
 “I cannot forego stating my belief that Oersted knew of Romagnosi’s discovery 
 announced in 1802, which was eighteen years before the publication of his own obser- 
 vations. It was mentioned in Giovanni Aldini’s (the nephew of Galvani’s) book. . . 
 
 . Oersted was in Paris in 1802, and 1803, and it appears from the book of Aldini, 
 that at the time he finished it, Oersted wa s still in communication with him ; for he 
 
 * Journal of the Society of Arts, April 23, 1858, vol. vi, p. 356. 
 
 \ Journal of the Society of Arts, July 29, 1859, vol. vii, p. 605. 
 
 X “Hans Christian Oersted, at Copenhagen, had directed the attention of the scum- 
 tific world much more effectually than Romagnosi of Italy had done, to the faet that 
 the magnetic needle deflects when a galvanic current comes near it. Dr. Hamel. 
 {Jour. Soc. Arts. 1859, vol. vii, p. 606.) 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 75 
 
 jays at the end (page 376), he had not been able to add the information received 
 from Oersted, doctor of the University at Copenhagen, about the galvanic labors of 
 jcientific men in that Country.”* * 
 
 All that is known of Oersted’s simple, generous, and upright character, utterly re- 
 pels any such dark suspicion: and the remarkable interval of eighteen years, which 
 elapsed between the two dates of publication, negatives even the probability of pla- 
 giarism. It seems only wonderful that no other experimental physicist haj>pened to 
 Lit upon the observation in all those years.! 
 
 In Sabine’s treatise on the “ Electric Telegraph,” reference is made in a note to 
 Izarn’s ‘‘Manual of Galvanism” and to his statement of Romaguosi’s early discovery :i 
 and in the second edition (of its historical portion), publishecLtwo years later, Sabine 
 remarks: “The discovery of the power of a galvanic current to deflect a magnet nee- 
 dle, as well as to polarize an unmagnetized one, was known to and described as 
 early as 1805 by Professor Izarn in his ‘Manuel du Gal vanisme.’ . . . After ex- 
 
 plaining the way to prepare the apparatus, which consists in putting a freely suspended 
 magnet needle parallel and close to a straight metallic conductor through which a 
 galvanic current is circulating, he describes the effects in the following words: ‘Ac- 
 cording to the observations of Romagn<$si, a physicist of Trent, a magnetic needle, being 
 submitted to a galvanic current, undergoes a declination ; and according to those of 
 J. Mojon, a learned chemist of Genoa, unmagnetized needles acquire by this means a 
 kind of magnetic polarity.’ To Romagn6si, physicist of Trent, therefore, and not as 
 is generally believed, to Oersted, physicist of Copenhagen, (who first observed in 1820 
 the phenomenon of the deflection of a magnet needle by a voltaic current,) is due the 
 credit of having made this important discovery. 
 
 While this is undoubtedly a correct verdict, it remains none the less true that the 
 rapid awakening of European physicists to the significance and importance of the 
 principle of the galvanometer, was due entirely to its rediscovery and reannounce- 
 ment by Professor Hans Christian Oersted in 1820. 
 
 NOTEC. (From p. 21.) 
 
 ANTICIPATIONS OF ELECTRO-MAGNETISM. 
 
 From the Treatises on Galvanism, by G. Aldini, published in 1804, and by J. Izarn, 
 published in 1805, (previously noticed,) we learn that Giuseppi Mojon, (Joseph Moyon 
 in the French,) a chemist of Genoa, on placing steel sewing-needles in connection with 
 a galvanic battery observed that they became magnetic: (probably with transverse 
 polarity.) The description is however very obscure. (Aldini, p. 191; Izarn, p. 120.) 
 
 “It deserves to be remembered,” says Dr. Hamel, “ that from Aldini’s book it was 
 known that the chemist Giuseppi Mojon, at Genoa, had before 1804 observed in un- 
 magnetized needles exposed to the galvanic current, ‘ a sort of polarity’. Izarn repeats 
 this also in his ‘Manuel du Galvanisme;’ which book was one of those that by order 
 were to be placed in the library of every Lycde in France ”.|| 
 
 Still a quarter of a century earlier, in 1777, (now a century ago,) Giovanni Baptista 
 Beccaria, a distinguished Italian natural philosopher, professor of experimental science 
 at Turin, and author of several works on Electricity, in the course of his experiments 
 
 * Journal of the Society of Arts, July 29, 1859, vol. vii, p. 60G. 
 
 t “ The invention all admired; and each how he 
 To be the inventor missed; — so easy seemed 
 Once found, which yet unfound, most would have thought 
 Impossible.” 
 
 (Milton’s Far. Lost, book vi.) 
 
 * \lhe Electric Telegraph, by Robert Sabine, 8vo, London, 1867, part i, chap, iv, sec. 
 29, p. 22. 
 
 ! § History of the Electric Telegraph, 2d edition (in Weale’sRu limentary Treatises), 1869 
 chap, iv, sec. 27, pp. 23, 24. 
 
 * \\ Journal of the Society of Arts, 1859, vol. vii, p. 606. 
 
76 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 “found that a needle through which he had sent an electric shock had in consequence 
 acquired a curious species of polarity ; for instead of turning as usual to the north and 
 south, it assumed a position at right angles to this, its two ends pointing to the east 1 
 and west.”* This curious phenomenon (which if properly investigated might have 
 led to the discovery of electro-magnetism) was exhibited by the action of common 
 frictional or mechanical electricity : galvanism not having been discovered till some 
 time later. It was probably this same transverse polarity that was afterward observed] 
 by Mojon. 
 
 NOTE D. (From p. 30.) 
 
 $ HENRY’S SPOOL MAGNET IN EUROPE. 
 
 Among the physicists of Europe who repeated Henry’s experiments on a similar! 
 scale, Claude S. M. Pouillet, professor of physics at the Ecole Polytechnique and director 
 of the Conservatoire at Paris, made in 1832, a magnet capable of sustaining 900 pounds. 
 At the session of the Societe Philomatique of Paris, for June 23, 1832, Pouillet gave an 
 account of recent experiments made by him with an electro-magnet of large size, ( 
 having several thousand feet of wire wound upon it. The following is the report ofj 
 this communication published in the “Bulletin” of the Society for August of that year: 
 
 “M. Pouillet communicated to the Society the results of experiments which he had 
 just made on the magnetization of round bars of iron, (bent in horseshoe form, and 
 surrounded on the arms with iron wire of a length of several thousand feet,) by 
 means of an electric current established in this iron wire. The magnetism thus ex- 
 cited in a magnet one foot in height, formed of a bar of iron two and a half inches in 
 diameter, and wrapped with 4,000 feet of wire, is sufficiently strong to support a 
 weight up to 900 pounds, even when the contact of the armature with the magnet is 
 reduced to an edge: so that the magnetic force is in this case stronger than the molec- 
 ular attraction, t Attending such magnetization, on a connection being made be- 
 tween the two extremities of the conducting wire, a spark and a strong shock are 
 produced. In another experiment, two similar magnets similarly arranged, having 
 been placed facing each other, and varied in distance from contact up to a separation 
 of a foot, the magnetization of the one produced a magnetization of the other by in- 
 duction ; so as to effect an electric current aiid spark when the two extremities of the 
 conducting wire were brought very close together. In the latter case there was felt 
 also a vivid shock. This shock may be communicated through a platinum wire even 
 to the distance of a hundred feet.” X 
 
 The source of this “ intensity ” magnet is as unmistakable as is that of the magneto-elec- 
 tric spark obtained by its means. Had the experimenter however divided his 4,000 feet 
 of wire into 50 or 60 separate coils, arranging suitably his galvanic battery in “multi- 
 ple arc” as a “ quantity” battery, he would certainly have greatly increased the at- 
 tractive force of his magnet, and rendered it comparable to Henry’s Yale-College mag- 
 net in lifting-power. 
 
 Pouillet in the third edition of his Elements de Physique Experimentale, published in 
 1837, gives a drawing of a double “ intensity” magnet arranged like Henry’s in a sup- 
 porting frame, of which he says : “Figures 432 and 433 represent an electro-magnet 
 
 *P. M. Roget, Treatise on Electro-magnetism, 1832, chap.i, art. 6, p. 3. (This treatise 
 is included in the “Library of Useful Knowledge,” vol. ii.) 
 
 t [Notwithstanding the considerable range of distance through which magnetism 
 acts, it is not probable that the aggregate magnetic tenacity of iron in any case 
 amounts to more than a very small fraction of its cohesive tenacity. ] 
 
 X Seance of 23d June, 1832. Nouveau Bulletin des Sciences, public par la “Socidtt; Philo- 
 matique de Paris,” livraison pour Aoftt, 1832, p. 127. This brief notice, republished in 
 Quetelet’q Correspondence Mathematique et Physique de l’Observatoire de Bruxelles, 1832, 
 liv. v, vol. vii, pp. 317, 318, is the only paper by Pouillet on the subject of magnetiza- 
 tion by electric currents, contained in the Catalogue of the Royhl Society. Presumably 
 therefore his only contribution on the subject. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 77 
 
 hieli I constructed in 1831 ; and which easily supports nearly one ton (more than a 
 lousand kilogrammes) when submitted to the current of a strong battery of 24 pairs, 
 consists of two liorse-shoes opposed to each other, formed of round bars from three 
 ) four inches (8 to 10 centimetres) in diameter, and from two to two and a half feet 
 >0 to 80 centimetres) in total length. The two arms of each horse-slioe are enveloped 
 ith about 1,100 yards (one thousand metres) of copper wire 26 thousandths of an 
 ich (two-thirds of a millimetre) in thickness. The same current traverses succes- 
 vely the 2,200 yards (two thousand metres) of wire ; but the helices are so disposed as to 
 ring their opposite poles together.” And the author repeats that as soon as the cur- 
 mtis established, the lower free magnet is attracted to the upper fixed magnet with 
 ich force as to lift “ an enormous weight, often exceeding a thousand kilogrammes.”* 
 The remark just made applies equally to this example of the Henry “ intensity” 
 agnet, that by the substitution of the multiple coil and the “ quantity” battery, it 
 lould have equalled the Henry Yale-College magnet, if not his Princeton magnet. 
 There is however in this latter account, an evident error of date, which should be 
 oted. The differences of detail (in every particular) between the two magnets re- 
 :rred to, preclude any suggestion of the latter being an inaccurately remembered 
 3Count of the former. The systematic excess of the latter magnet in every element 
 f construction and performance equally excludes the possibility of its having been 
 evised by its author prior to his notice before the “Society Pliilomatique” (on the 
 Id of June, 1832) of his success in developing a magnetic power of 900 pounds. And 
 le fact that Pouillet, in the second edition of his Elements of Experimental Physics 
 ublished in 1832 (“revue, corrig6e et augmentee”), makes no allusion whatever to 
 ich a magnet, may be taken as conclusive evidence that no such magnet (nor any 
 :her) was constructed by him in 1831. t 
 
 The error of statement, in his third edition of the Elements of Physics is easily ex- 
 [ained as a simple inadvertence in trusting to memory for a precise date.! 
 
 It may be accepted with tolerable certainty that Pouillet’s later and larger magnet 
 >uld not have been made earlier than the latter part of 1832. And yet this inadver- 
 >nt antedating by one year (wholly unimportant though it be) has been very precisely 
 (produced in the fourth edition of Pouillet’s Physics, published in 1844, in the fifth 
 lition published in .1847, in the sixth edition published in 1853, in the seventh edi- 
 on published in 1856, and presumably in every subsequent edition, as well as in the 
 nmerous translations of this popular work. The earliest date of publication of Pou- 
 let’s 900-pomnl magnet is August, 1832; of his second, or 2200-pound magnet, is 1837. 
 
 NOTE E. (From p. 32.) 
 
 henry’s early telegraphic experiments. 
 
 The following are some of the testimonials of living eye-witnesses to the operation 
 f Henry’s early electro-magnetic telegraph, during the years 1831 and 1832. 
 
 The Hon. Alexander W. Bradford, a former pupil of the Albany Academy under 
 tenry’s professorship in 1831, and who left the academy in 1832, thus recalls his aca- 
 emic experiences, a third of a century later : 4 ‘And there was another professor, whose 
 fe has been spared, who rose with the sun to instruct his pupil eager after knowledge ; 
 ho giving his heart and soul to the duties of the school, had yet time for exploring 
 
 * Elements de Physique Experimental#, etc. par M. Pouillet, third edition, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 aris, 1837, liv. iii, sec. iv, chap. 5, art. 277. Vol. i, p. 572. 
 
 t Elements de Physique Experimentalc, etc. par M. Pouillet, second edition, 4 vols. 8vo. 
 aris, 1832. 
 
 t As if to magnify this accidental error, Dr. Lardner, in a popular text-book on the 
 ilegrapli, makes the off-hand statement: “In 1830, an electro-magnet of extraordinary 
 ower was constructed under the superintendence of M. Pouillet at Paris. 
 
 Pith a current of moderate intensity the apparatus is capable of supporting a weight 
 f several tons." (Lardner and Bright’s Electric Telegraph , 12mo., London, 1867, chap. 
 , sec. 39, p. 22.) 
 
78 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 the deep paths of science ; who with his wires and silk thread winding miles of insu- 
 lated copper in the commencement hall of the academy, patiently toiled his way to the 
 demonstration of the magnetic power of the galvanic battery; and years before the 
 invention of the telegraph, proclaimed to America and to Europe the means of communi- 
 cation by the electric fluid. I was an eye-witness to those experiments and to tlieir 
 eventual demonstration and triumph. In this commemorative festival, let us not for- 
 get to honor the name of Joseph Henry.” * 
 
 On the same interesting occasion Dr. Orlando Meads thus recounted Henry’s early 
 triumph: “The older students of the academy in the years 1830, 1831, and 1832, and 
 others who witnessed his experiments, which at that time excited so much interest in 
 this city, wull remember the long coils of wire which ran circuit upon circuit for more 
 than a mile in length around one of the upper rooms in the academy, for the purpose 
 of illustrating the fact that a galvanic current could be transmitted through its whole 
 length so as to excite a magnet at the farther end of the line, and thus move a steel 
 bar which struck a bell. This in a scientific point of view, was the demonstration and 
 accomplishment of all that was required for the magnetic telegraph. The science of 
 the telegraph was here complete. It needed only the inventive genius of Morse to 
 supply the admirable instrument which was to make it available for practical use. 
 
 . . . All honor to the inventor ; but let us not forget that the click of the telegraph 
 
 which is heard from every joint of those mystic wires which now link together every 
 city, and village, and post, and camp, and station, all over this continent, is but the 
 echo of that little bell which first sounded in that upper room of the academy. These 
 facts are a part of the history of the academy ; and it is fitting that on an occasion 
 like this, so important a discovery made by one of her own sons, in her service, and 
 under her own roof, should not be passed over in silence.”! 
 
 Professor James Hall (in the same year in which he was president of the American 
 Association, at its Albany meeting) addressed a letter to Professor Henry, dated Jan- 
 uary 19, 1856, reciting the following reminiscence : 
 
 “While a student of the Rensselaer School in Troy (New York), in August, 1832, I 
 visited Albany with a friend, having a letter of introduction to you from Professor 
 Eaton. Our principal object was to see your electro-magnetic apparatus,. of which we 
 had heard much, and at the same time the library and collections of the Albany In- 
 stitute. You showed us your laboratory in a lower story or basement of the building, 
 and in a larger room in an upper story, some electric and galvanic apparatus, with 
 various philosophical instruments. In this room and extending around the same, was 
 a circuit of wire stretched along the wall, and at one termination of this in the recess 
 of a window a bell was fixed, while the other extremity was connected with a gal- 
 vanic apparatus. You showed us the manner in which the bell could be made to ring 
 by a current of electricity transmitted through this wire ; and you remarked that this 
 method might be adopted for giving signals by the ringing of a bell at the distance 
 of many miles from the point of its connection with the galvanic apparatus. All the 
 circumstances attending this visit to Albany are fresh in my recollection ; and. during 
 the past years while so much has been said respecting the invention of electric tele- 
 graphs, I have often had occasion to mention the exhibition of your electric telegraph 
 in the Albany Academy in 1832.” $ 
 
 On the occasion of a visit by Henry to the Albany Institute, abofit two years later 
 than the date of the above letter, Professor Hall made public reference to the same 
 vivid recollections. At a meeting of the Albany Institute, held Januay 13, 1858, in 
 a hall of the Albany Academy building, “Professor Hall called attention to the fact, 
 jn connection with the visit of Professor Henry, that in 1832 he had witnessed in this 
 
 *“ Commemorative Address,” on the celebration of the semi-centennial anniversary 
 of the Albany Academy, June 23, 1863. Proceedings , etc. p. 48. 
 
 t“ Historical Discourse”, at semi-centennial anniversary of Albany Academy, j 
 June 23, 1863. Proceedings, etc. pp. 25, 26. 
 
 t Published in the Smithsonian Report for 1857, p. 96. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 79 
 
 building illustrations by Professor Henry of bis results in electro-magnetism. He saw 
 here a wire of great length, through which Professor Henry transmitted a current of 
 ralvanic electricity, and made the current to exert its power in ringing a hell at the 
 extremity of the wire. This was certainly the first establishment of the practicability 
 jf the magnetic telegraph.” 
 
 “ Professor Henry stated that he felt gratified at this public recognition of his early 
 labors and discoveries in reference to the electric telegraph.” * 
 
 Henry’s primitive electro-magnetic telegraph (as already stated) was properly an 
 icoustic telegraph. Morse’s subsequent electro-magnetic telegraph was a recording tel- 
 egraph, and it was this feature of automatic register which was always regarded by 
 ts inventor as the most characteristic and important element of his invention. “ It 
 vas soon discovered, after the introduction of the Morse system of telegraph, that words 
 •ould be read by the click of the magnet ^ but paper was used upon which the arbitrary 
 ilphabet of dots and lines was indented by the instruments, for all matters of business 
 ip to 1852, and by many lines even later; but at the present time there is scarcely an 
 >ffice of any importance in the United States where the paper is used to receive the 
 ■ecord. Ten years ago the practice was almost invariable in the principal offices to 
 employ an operator to read the dispatch from the long strips of paper as it came from 
 ;he instrument ; and a copyist who stood by his side took it down. Now the system is 
 mtirely changed. The operator reads by the click, and copies the message himself. 
 3y this means the expense is lessened nearly one-half, and the risk of errors in a far 
 greater ratio.”t To which it may be added, that the diminished duty of the armature 
 enables a single circuit to be operated through double the distance practicable with 
 he Morse recorder. 
 
 And thus it has come to pass that the Morse telegraph to-day, is (by reversion to a 
 nore primitive type) essentially an acoustic telegraph. X So that “the click of the 
 elegrapli heard all over this continent,” is in Dr. Meads’s expressive phrase, function- 
 illy and in truth “ but the echo of that little bell which first sounded in that upper 
 oom of the Albany Academy.” 
 
 NOTE F. (From p. 39.) 
 
 HENRY’S RELATION TO THE ENGLISH TELEGRAPH. 
 
 In consequence of the repeated disagreements between the English patentees, Messrs, 
 yooke and Wheatstone, (not long after their procurement of a joint patent in June, 
 837,) as to their respective shares of originality and credit in the invention of the 
 teedle telegraph, “Articles of Agreement” were drawn up on the 16th of November, 
 .840, for the submission of their grounds of claim and of dissatisfaction, to the arbi- 
 rament of two referees, Marc Isambard Brunei, on the part of Mr. Cooke, and John 
 Frederick Daniell, on the part of Mr. Wheatstone. And in December of 1840, the 
 
 * Trans, of Albany Institute, vol. iv, “Proceedings,” p. 245. 
 
 t Prescott’s History of Electric Telegraph, Boston, 1860, chap, v, pp. 92-93. To the same 
 fleet is the statement in his later work: “ In the larger telegraph offices of the United 
 Itates and Canada, the recording instrument, or register, is entirely dispensed with, 
 md all communications are read by the sound made by the armature lever as it vibrates 
 >etween the upper and lower stops.” (Prescott’s Electricity and the Electric Telegraph, 
 >Tew York, 1877, chap, xxx, p. 435.) 
 
 X Numerous patents have been granted for “sounders,” having for their object the 
 imphasizing or re-enforcement of the sound from the receiving key" or armature 
 mpacts. Prescott, in his recent work, speaking of Thomson’s ingenious and extremely 
 Lelicate “siphon recorder,” remarks : “ It is somewhat curious that in the progress of 
 elegraphic improvement, Morse’s telegraph (the most valuable feature of which orig- 
 nally was considered to be its capacity for recording communications) should have 
 >een modified in practice into an acoustic semaphore, while Cooke’s telegraph (origi- 
 Lally a semaphore) should at length have been also modified into a recording instrument.” 
 Electricity and the Electric Telegraph, chap, xxxii, p. 561.) 
 
80 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 contestants presented to tlie said arbitrators the carefully prepared statements of their 
 respective “cases.”* 
 
 Mr. Cooke, in his “Statement of Facts to the Arbitrators,” gave the following ac- 
 count of his telegraphic failure in February, 1837, which was precisely that encoun- 
 tered and announced by Barlow, some dozen years before : “ I employed myself in 
 
 trying experiments upon the electro-magnet, with a view to discover at what distance 
 an electric current would excite the temporary magnetism required for moving the 
 detent of the mechanism. For this purpose I adjusted above a mile of wire in the 
 chambers of Mr. Lane, in Lincoln’s Inn; but the magnets and battery being ill proportioned, 
 my experiments were unsatisfactory.”! The cause of failure stated, evidently repre- 
 sents his acquired knowledge in 1840, not that in 1837. It was the singular fatality 
 of electro-magnetism confronting every early experimenter from Barlow downward, 
 that whether the number of cells in the battery were increased, or whether the length 
 of wire. coiled around the magnet were extended, the effect upon the magnet in either 
 case rapidly diminished after a certain short distance of circuit. Who then would 
 think for a moment of compounding these enfeebling arrangements ? 
 
 In the desperate emergency which seemed to impose an impassable barrier to his sig- 
 nal device, Mr. Cooke consulted successively three among the most eminent of British 
 electricians: Professor Faraday, Dr. Roget, and Professor Wheatstone. The following is 
 the continuation of his own account, from the “case” already quoted: “In this scien- 
 tific difficulty I sought the assistance of Dr. Faraday, who advised me to increase the 
 number of the plates of the battery proportionably to the length of the wires ; an 
 expedient which in some degree overcame the defect of the magnet. t I also con- 
 sulted Dr. Roget upon the same scientific point. . . . Dr. Roget informed me that 
 
 Professor Wheatstone had a quantity of wire at King’s College, which might assist 
 me in trying experiments upon the electro-magnet, and he advised me on that ac- 
 count to submit my difficulty to him.” To the same effect, in his later pamphlet pub- 
 lished in March, 1856, (more than fifteen years afterward,) he said: “This result was 
 to be accomplished by means of an electro-magnet ; and it was my inability to make 
 the electro-magnet act at long distances which first led me to Mr. Wheatstone.” § 
 
 At this point it is proper to turn to Professor Wheatstone’s statement of the inter- 
 view, in his own “ case,” as presented to the arbitrators at the same time, in Decem- 
 ber, 1840 : 
 
 1 ‘ I believe but am not quite sure that it was on the first of March, 1837, that Mr, 
 Cooke introduced himself to me. He told me that he had applied to Dr. Faraday and 
 Dr. Roget for some information relative to a subject on which he was engaged, and 
 that they had referred him to me as having the means of answering his inquiries. . . . 
 Relying on my former experience, I at once told Mr. Cooke that it would not and could 
 not act as a telegraph, because sufficient attractive power could not be imparted to an 
 electro-magnet interposed in a long circuit ; and to convince him of the truth of this 
 assertion, I invited him to King’s College to see the repetition of the experiments on 
 which my conclusion was founded. He came, and after seeing a variety of voltaic 
 
 * These documents, with the “award” rendered April 27, 1841, published immedi- 
 ately afterward, were some years later republished by Mr. Cooke (together with sub- 
 sequent controversial pamphlets between the parties) in two octavo volumes, under 
 the common title, “The Electric Telegraph : was it invented by Professor Wheatstone ? ” 
 One volume, published in 1856, comprising the “Arbitration Papers” in full, is inju- 
 diciously designated “Part II.” The other volume, published in 1857, embracing 
 matter of a much later date, is improperly designated “Part I.” This part comprises 
 a reprint of “Mr. Cooke’s First Pamphlet,” published in December, 1854; of “Mr. 
 Wheatstone’s Answer,” published in January, 1856; and of “Mr. Cooke’s Reply,” 
 published in March, 1856. 
 
 + The Electric Telegraph, etc. by W. F. Cooke, part ii, sec. 46, p. 24. 
 
 t Faraday in his brilliant series of researches commencing in September, 1831, em- 
 ployed almost exclusively Henry’s “quantity” magnet of numerous short coils ; and 
 hence naturally paid little attention to the feebler energies of Henry’s “intensity” 
 magnet. 
 
 § Work above quoted, part i, pp. 198, 199. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 81 
 
 magnets, which even with powerful batteries exhibited only slight adhesive attrac- 
 tion, he expressed his disappointment.”* “ When I endeavored to ascertain how a 
 
 bell might be more efficiently rung, the attractive power obtained by temporarily 
 magnetizing soft iron first suggested itself to me. The experiments I made with the 
 long • circuit at King’s College however led me to conclude that the attraction of a 
 piece of iron by an electro-magnet could not be made available in circuits of very 
 great length, and therefore I had no hopes of being able to discharge an alarum by 
 this means.”! 
 
 Not a little surprising is it that three Savans so distinguished, all of them familiar 
 in a general way with Henry’s electro -magnetic researches published more than six 
 years before, should each have failed to apprehend, or should have forgotten, the dis- 
 tinctly declared virtue of his “intensity ” magnet. 1 Henry, in 1829, and 1830, had fully 
 demonstrated that while with a single galvanic pair a small magnet surrounded with 
 a long wire showed ve»y feeble magnetism (as compared with one of short coil), with 
 a “trough” battery of many pairs it exerted a stronger attraction after the current 
 had passed through 1,060 feet of wire in the circuit than when the coil was directly 
 connected with the battery. He had announced: “ From these experiments it is evi- 
 dent that in forming the coil we may either use one very long wire or several shorter 
 ones, as the circumstances may require ; in the first case our galvanic combination 
 must consist of a numbei' of plates, in the secondit must be formed of a single pair.” And he 
 had expressly called attention to the fact that the former arrangement “is directly 
 applicable to the project of forming an electro -magnetic telegraph.” § 
 
 Mr. Cooke continued the narrative in his “case” as follows: “On many occasions 
 during the months of March and April, 1837, we tried experiments together upon the 
 electro-magnet ; our object being to make it act efficiently at long distances in its 
 office of removing the detent. The result of our experiments confirmed my apprehen- 
 sion that I was still without the power of exciting magnetism at long distances. . . 
 
 . In this difficulty we adopted the expedient of a secondary circuit, which was used 
 for some time in connection with my alarum.” || 
 
 It is at this period that Henry made his first visit to England ; and in London he 
 formed an acquaintance with Faraday, with Roget, and with Wheatstone, with each 
 of whom he had many pleasant and familiar interviews, and for each of whom he ever 
 Bntertained a warm personal regard. He has left the following account of his colnmu- 
 uication with the professor last named : 
 
 “In February, 1837, I went to Europe; and early in April of that year, Professor 
 Wheatstone, of London, (in the course of a visit by myself to him in King’s College, 
 London, with Professor Bache, now of the Coast Survey,) explained to ns his plans of an 
 electro-magnetic telegraph ; and among other things exhibited to us his method of 
 bringing into action a second galvanic circuit. This consisted in closing the second 
 jircuit by the deflection of a needle so placed that the two upward projecting ends of 
 the open circuit would be united by the contact of the end of the needle when de- 
 lected ; and on opening or breaking the circuit so closed, by opening the first circuit 
 and thus interrupting the current, the needle would resume its ordinary position 
 mder the influence of the magnetism of the earth. I informed him that I had 
 levised another method of producing effects somewhat similar. This consisted in 
 
 * [“ Electro-magnets of the greatest power, even when the most energetic batteries 
 are employed, utterly cease to act when they are connected by considerable lengths of 
 tv ire with the battery.” ( Introduction to the Study of Chemical Ph ilosophy : by Prof. John 
 Frederick Daniell, 2d ed. 1843, chap, xvi, sec. 859, p. 576.)] 
 
 t The Electric Telegraph, etc. by W. F. Cooke, part ii, sects. 268, 272, and 299, pp. 86 
 17, and 93. 
 
 t Faraday refers to Hetiry’s magnets in his Experimental Researches, etc. (Nov. 24 
 .831), vol. i, art. 57, p. 15 ; and Roget refers to them in his excellent Treatise on Electro- 
 magnetism, 8vo. London, 1832, chap, x, sec. 161, p. 55. 
 
 $ Silliman’s American Journal of Science, January, 1831, vol. xix, p. 404. 
 
 || The Electric Telegraph, etc. by W. F. Cooke, part ii, sec. 51, p. 27. 
 
 6 E T 
 
82 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 opening tlie circuit of my large quantity magnet at Princeton, when loaded with many 
 hundred pounds weight, hy attracting upward a small piece of movable wire with a 
 small intensity magnet connected with a long wire circuit. When the circuit of the 
 large battery was thus broken by an action from a distance the weights would fall ; 
 and great mechanical effect could thus be produced, such as the ringing of church-bells 
 at a distance of a hundred miles or more, — an illustration of which I had previously 
 given to my class at Princeton. . . . The object of Professor Wheatstone as I un- 
 
 derstood it, in bringing into action a second circuit, was to provide a remedy for the 
 diminution of force in a long circuit. My object in the process described by me was 
 to bring into operation a large quantity magnet connected with a quantity battery in 
 a local circuit, by means of a small intensity magnet and an intensity battery at a 
 distance.” * 
 
 This important historic interchange of experiments and projects between Henry and 
 Wheatstone, possesses an interest and a significance quite beyond that present in the 
 contemplation of the writer. To Henry, the confidence imparted was striking only from 
 the coincidence of separate inventions in the combination or conjunction of two 
 circuits ; in his own case by the agency of an “ intensity” magnet at a distance, in the 
 other case by the agency of a galvanometer needle at a distance, t But to Wheatstone } 
 how different must have been the impression and suggestion! From the simple account 
 of Henry’s contrasted “intensity” and “ quantity ” magnets ; of his telegraphic ex- 
 periment in 1831, — the magnetic tapping of a bell through more than a mile of fine cop- 
 per wire; of his daring faith in being able to ring heavy bells by a terminal “quan- 
 tity” magnet, “at a distance of a hundred miles or more!” with what new interest and 
 meaning must the earlier and neglected researches of Henry have been recalled. Who 
 could doubt that with the unsolved problem of Mr. Cooke just fresh before him, with 
 his active and fertile mind awakened, quick to seize upon and develop a new idea, 
 (as well illustrated in his intercourse with Mr. Cooke,) who could doubt that the pre- 
 sentation above recorded (in April of 1837,) must have been to him a new solution and 
 a sudden revelation ? 
 
 Surely some recognition of Henry’s published researches was to be looked for in return 
 for the unexpected but unquestionable benefit conferred. We search in vain for any 
 such requital or acknowledgment. In amplifying his own “ improvements ” before the 
 arbitrators, he says: “But the most important point of all was my application of the the- 
 ory of Ohm to telegraphic circuits, which enabled me to ascertain the best proportions 
 between the length, thickness, &c., of the multiplying coils and the other resistances in 
 the circuit, and to determine the number and size of the elements of the battery to pro- 
 duce the maximum effect. With this law and its applications, no persons who had before 
 occupied themselves with experiments relating to Electric Telegraphs had been acquainted” /+ 
 The “theory of Ohm” (announced in 1827), had avowedly no influence whatever on 
 Wheatstone’s researches — till after his interview with Henry, in April, 1837 ; nor was 
 the “theory of Ohrn” any more definitely applied, or any more implicitly confirmed, 
 by the later English experimenter in 1837, than it had been by the earlier American 
 experimenter in 1829, aud 1830. And Professor Wheatstone’s explicit declarations that 
 in March , 1837, he found by experience that “sufficient attractive power could not be 
 
 * Smithsonian Report for 1857, pp. Ill, 11*2. As Prof. Alexander Dallas Bache was 
 present on the occasion above mentioned, and as he was also subsequently a Regent 
 of the Institution, under whose direct supervision and authority the above statement 
 of Henry was published by the board, it may be regarded as .having his implicit 
 corroboration. 
 
 t Professor Wheatstone, in his “Answer” to Mr. Cooke’s Pamphlet, says: “My ex- 
 periments led me to believe that the motions of a needle could be produced at dis- 
 tances at which no effects of electro-magnetic attraction cou^d be obtained.” (Letter 
 of October 26, 1840; reprint, p, 114.) 
 
 t “Professor Wheatstone’s Case.” The Electric Telegraph , etc. by W. F. Cooke, part 
 ii, sect. 290, p. 91. 
 
HENRY AND .THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 83 
 
 t 
 
 imparted to an electro-magnet interposed in a long circuit ,” — tliat “tlie attraction of a 
 piece of iron by an electro-magnet conld not be made available in circuits of very 
 great length," excludes absolutely and forever, all possibility of competitive claim to 
 a discovery admittedly “the most important point of all” in the practical develop- 
 ment of a real telegraph; — the . discovery of the “ intensity ” magnet. Undoubtedly re- 
 quired to institute especial experiments in order to properly proportion his magnet 
 and battery, Wheatstone was led by self-esteem to entirely overestimate the original- 
 ity of such experiments, and correspondingly to underrate the value of Henry’s in- 
 structions or suggestions. 
 
 Recurring to his plan of a terminal secondary circuit Professor Wheatstone re-iter- 
 ates in the same document : “ Having convinced myself that it was hopeless to expect 
 to ring an alarum by the direct action of the electric current through a circuit of 
 great length on an electro-magnet as ordinarily constructed, I began to think whether 
 the effect required might not be produced in an indirect manner. It occurred to me 
 that the difficulty would be overcome if a short circuit in which the electro-magnet of 
 the alarum and a rather powerful electro-motor should be interposed, could be com 
 pleted and broken at will by some action governed by the current in the long circuit. 
 
 . . . These methods of completing the secondary circuit have lost all their impor- 
 
 tance and are scarcely worth contending about, since jny discovery that electro-magnets 
 may be so constructed as to produce the required effects by means of the direct cur- 
 rent, even in very long circuits.” 
 
 Again returning to this fatal theme, he repeats (having resolved to “carry out his 
 investigations alone” without the co-operation of Mr. Cooke), “After this resolution 
 had been taken, I commenced a series of researches on the laws of electro-magnets , and 
 was fortunate enough to discover the conditions ( which had not hitherto been made the 
 subject of philosophical inquiry) by which effects could be produced at great distances. 
 This rendered electro-magnetic attraction for the first time applicable in an imme- 
 diate manner to telegraphic purposes.”* — Notwithstanding that Henry, in 1830, 
 had demonstrated — and on the first of January, 1831, had confidently announced to 
 the scientific world, that his own original “intensity” magnet with a “trough” 
 battery, was “directly applicable to the project of forming an electro-magnetic tele- 
 , graph ” ! 
 
 This redundant iteration of original discovery, this reticence^ as to any similar 
 investigation known to have been even attempted by Henry, scarcely permits the 
 charitable suggestion of “ unconsciousness.” That his persistent claim should have 
 misled his colleague, Professor Daniell, into incorporating in the text of his new 
 edition of the “Chemical Philosophy” the following laudation, is perhaps not alto- 
 gether to be wondered at: “Ingenious as Professor Wheatstone’s contrivances are, 
 they would have been of no avail for telegraphic purposes without the investigation 
 ( which he was the first to make ) of the laws of electro-magnets when acted on through 
 great lengths of wire.”! Were the name of Henry inserted in the italicised paren- 
 thesis, the proposition stated would be beyond the reach of cavil or exception. In- 
 genious as Professor Wheatstone’s contrivances were, they would have been of no avail 
 for telegraphic purposes, without the investigation (which Henry was the first 
 to make)— of the laws of electro-magnets when acted on through great lengths of 
 wire. 
 
 Mr. Cooke (to whom probably even the existence of Henry was unknown) makes 
 the very expressive comment on the above passage from the “ Chemical Philosophy” 
 of the professor at King’s College : “ Mr. Daniell might have added that this investi- 
 
 * “Professor Wheatstone’s Case,” as above cited, sect. 306, 314, and 333, pp. 94,96, 
 and 100. 
 
 t Introduction to the Study of Chemical Philosophy, second edition, 1843, chap, xvi, 
 k eect. 859, p. 576. 
 
84 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Ration had not been commenced or thought of in March, 1837 ! ” * In this pamphlet 
 controversy which occurred between the joint-patentees some fourteen years after the 
 memorable “award,” Professor Wheatstone in his “Answer” (of January, 1856,) to 
 Mr. Cooke’s first pamphlet (of December, 1854,) somewhat more feebly re-echoes: 
 “With this law and its applications no persons in England who had before occupied 
 themselves with experiments relating to electric telegraphs had been acquainted.”! 
 
 The substance of the “award” rendered by the distinguished arbitrators April 27, 
 1841, in the matter of the Cooke and Wheatstone controversy, was that “Mr. Cooke 
 is entitled to stand alone as the gentleman to whom this country is indebted for haying 
 practically introduced and carried out the electric telegraph as a useful undertaking, 
 promising to be a work of national importance: and Professor Wheatstone is ac- 
 knowledged as the scientific man whose profound and successful researches have 
 already prepared the public to receive it as a project capable of practical application.”! 
 This decision — studiously non-committal as is its language, and even as interpreted 
 by the extra-judicial letter of Professor Daniell, dated March 24, 1843, (two years sub- 
 sequently,) cannot be regarded as sustaining the prominent theory of “Professor 
 Wheatstone’s Case,” assuming priority of suggestion or of application of the needle 
 telegraph, as compared with Mr. Cooke. 
 
 NOTE G. (From p. 48.) 
 
 THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE “MORSE ALPHABET.” 
 
 It appears from various concurring testimonies, that the new recording instrument 
 constructed for Professor Morse by Mr. Yail during October, November, and Decem- 
 ber, 1837, was entirely of his own design, without any suggestions from Professor 
 Morse ; and that its arrangement for discontinuous marking was specially contrived 
 by its maker for an alphabet exclusively devised by himself; which he abstained 
 from publicly claiming, owing to a delicate sense of obligation incurred by his con- 
 tract with Professor Morse, to render him every assistance in perfecting the mechan- 
 ical arrangements of the telegraph. § 
 
 That Professor Morse had no conception on the 3d of October, 1837, of the form of 
 nstrument contemplated by Mr. Yail, is clearly shown by his autographic “ caveat” 
 of that date. And his letter to Mr. Yail, of October 24th, announcing the completion 
 of the numbered dictionary, (in ’which he wrote “we can now talk or write anything 
 by numbers,”) is equally conclusive evidence that at this later date, he was still 
 unconscious of any alphabetic improvement. 
 
 An article in the New York Sun, by its editor, Mr. Moses S. Beach, (written in 1858,) 
 under the heading “Plonor to whom honor is due,” makes the statement, “We will 
 mention a few incidents connected with Professor Morse’s own experience, which we 
 have never seen in print, and which lose none of their interest from the unassuming 
 modesty of the parties referred to.” And after alluding to the assistance furnished 
 
 * Mr. Cooke’s ‘ 1 Reply ” to Professor Wheatstone’s 1 ‘Answer.” ( The Electric Telegraph, 
 etc. by W. F. Cooke, part i, p. 199.) Dr. John Locke, of Cincinnati, who was in Lon- 
 don in the summer of 1837, on his return to this country, having informed Professor 
 Morse of Wheatstone’s telegraphic experiments, Professor Morse in a letter from New 
 York to Alfred Yail, at Speedwell, dated October 24, 1837, thus referred to the matter : 
 “We have just heard that Professor Wheatstone has tried an experiment with his 
 method, twenty miles, with success. We have therefore nothing to fear.” (Prime’s 
 Life of Morse, chap, viii, p. 326.) At this date Professor Gale had operated the Morse 
 instrument through only three miles of wire in the circuit. 
 
 t The Electric Telegraph, etc., by W. F. Cooke, part i, p. 57. 
 
 + The Electric Telegraph, etc., by W. F. Cooke, part i, p. 16: and part ii, pp. 214 and 
 268. 
 
 §By the terms of the partnership in the telegraph, Mr. Vail agreed “to devote his 
 personal services and skill in constructing and bringing to perfection, as also in im- 
 proving, the mechanical parts of said invention, . . . without charge for such 
 
 personal services to the oilier proprietors, and for their common benefit.” 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 85 
 
 the inventor in his early imperfect experiments by tbe Messrs. Yail, tlie editor con- 
 tinues: “Alfred Yail entered into these experiments with his whole soul, and to him 
 is Professor Morse indebted, quite as much as to his own wit, for his ultimate 
 triumph. He it ivas who invented the far-famed alphabet ; and he too was the inventor 
 of the instrument which bears Morse’s name. But whatever he did or contrived, 
 went cheerfully to the great end. Alfred felt rewarded in seeing the gradual ac- 
 complishment of the dream. ”* 
 
 In an interesting article entitled “The first week of the Telegraph,” written in 
 I860 for a New .York monthly magazine, by Dr. William P. Yail, the following sig- 
 nificant allusion to his deceased nephew, Mr. Alfred Yail, occurs: “The birth-time 
 and the birth-place of the telegraph as a recording instrument of intelligence, . . . 
 
 the parties who wrought the rude original plan into working order and gave it effi- 
 ciency, the man who invented the 1 Morse alphabet ’ (so called), and to whose ingenuity, 
 mechanical skill, and tireless perseverance, the clock-work of the telegraph machine 
 is largely due, ... all this is well understood, and for the most part is written 
 down, and the record some day in the near future must find its place in history, upon 
 the true principle of sumn caique.” t 
 
 It is noteworthy that neither the published statement made by the editor of the 
 “ Sun,” nor that made by Mr. Yail’s uncle in the “ Hours at Home,” (both widely cir- 
 culated, and copied into other journals during Professor Morse’s life-time,) was ever 
 called in question by the celebrated telegrapher. His painful silence under the cir- 
 cumstances is not easily defensible. 
 
 Mr. Francis O. J. Smith, one of the partners in the original telegraph patent of 
 Morse, (having had as capitalist and business manager, a one-fourth interest in the 
 enterprise,) has also stated in a published letter, dated March 30, 1872, (not long be- 
 fore Professor Morse’s death,) that the modified horizontal lever adapted “to emboss 
 the alphabetic characters,” was “ neither invented nor combined in the telegraph by 
 Professor Morse, but exclusively by our associate — Mr. Alfred Yail; although for 
 reasons that will be satisfactory to inost»minds, they we r e never publicly credited to 
 lim, but have been claimed exclusively by Professor Morse as his own invented com- 
 bination. ”t 
 
 Dr. Gale, the only surviving member of the original partnership, states in a recent 
 fetter on the subject, that he does not distinctly remember whether the changed ar- 
 rangement of the lever to a horizontal position in the new model constructed by Mr. 
 Vail, was his exclusive invention or not. 
 
 In a biographical sketch of Alfred Yail by Mr. Frederick Brent Read, of Cincinnati, 
 published in 1«873, the writer states without qualification: “Alfred Yail first pro- 
 iuced in the new instrument the first available Morse machine. He invented the first 
 :ombination of the horizontal lever motion to actuate a pen or pencil or style, and the 
 mtirely new telegraphic alphabet of dots, spaces, and marks, which it necessitated ; 
 md he did so prior, to September, 1837, the month when the old instrument passed into 
 lis hands for reconstruction. . . . The new machine was Yail’s, not Morse’s. 
 
 * New York Sun, for September 25, 1858. Republished in the Weekly Sun, for Octo- 
 >er 2, 1858. In a recent letter on the subject, Mr. M. S. Beach, the author of the 
 tbove, states : “I was then personally acquainted with the Yails, and a not unfrequent 
 fisitor at the homestead in Morristown: besides of course having a personal ac- 
 [uaintance with Professor Morse, and with the telegraph managers generally. My im- 
 pression is that the article was at the time approved for its exact statement — never 
 controverted.” 
 
 t Scribner’s Hours at Home , September, 1889, vol. ix, pp. 435, 436. In response to 
 n inquiry as to the evidence of Mr. A. Yail’s invention of the “dot-and-dash” alpha- 
 bet, Dr. \V. P. Yail, the author of the above, declares in a recent letter, “It was so 
 mderstood by all who were admitted to his intimacy. In a conversation with him 
 hortly before his death, in 1859, he so assured me. I am not aware that Mr. Morse 
 >ver set up an adverse claim.” 
 
 tA pamphlet entitled “ History Getting Eight on the invention of the American 
 Electro-magnetic Telegraph.” 1872, 'p. 21. It does not appear that Professor Morse 
 ver did explicitly claim these inventions as his own. 
 
8 G 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Tlie claim is clearly made then, that Alfred Vail in the first place invented an entirely 
 new alphabet; secondly, he invented an entirely new machine in which was the first 
 combination of the horizontal lever motion to actuate a pen or pencil or style, so ar- 
 ranged as to perform the new duties required with precision, simplicity, and rapidity \ 
 and thirdly, Vail invented, several years afterward [in 1844], the new lever and 
 [grooved] roller which embossed into paper the wholly simple and perfect alphabetic 
 characters which lie alone originated.”* 
 
 Numerous experiments with various kinds of pencils, fountain-pens, and inked 
 roulettes, having shown their inefficiency for the uniform marking of the “ dot-and- 
 dash” alphabet, Alfred Vail at last boldly discarded all marking devices, and em- 
 ployed a blunt steel point near the end of the registering lever, playing directly over 
 a narrow groove in the roller which supported the record-fillet of paper. In this man- 
 ner the variable lines of the Vail alphabet were permanently indented in the paper,, 
 with perfect facility and unerring regularity. Mr. F. B. Read in his biographical 
 sketch of Samuel F. B. Morse (in the work just quoted), after alluding t o his original 
 apparatus as being placed by him 11 in Mr. Vail’s hands for an entire mechanical recon- 
 struction throughout, to speak a language not only wholly unknown to the first ma- 
 chine, but to perform entirely new functions, and to produce an entirely new system of 
 signs and letters which the first by its structure was physically incapable of being made 
 to speak adds with regard to Mr. Vail’s subsequent improvement, “ His more perfect 
 invention of a steel style upon a lever which could strike into the paper as it was 
 drawn onward over a grooved roller and emboss upon it the same alphabetic characters, 
 was not made until 18il, about the time the first line of telegraph began to operate 
 between Baltimore and Washington.”! 
 
 Simple as may appear the substitution of the dry point for the inked wheel or pen,, 
 its introduction effected a wonderful saving of time, of attention, and of annoyance. 
 In a memorandum attached to the original model of the lever-style and grooved roller, 
 Alfred Vail wrote, “ I have not asserted publicly my right as first and sole inventor, 
 because I wished to preserve the peaceful unity of the invention, and because I could 
 not according to my contract with Professor Morse, have got a patent for it.”! 
 
 Mr. Read, in the same biography of Morse, after quoting his feeble and insufficient 
 Iribute to Vail, in his speech at the banquet given at New York on the evening of 
 December 29, 1868, in honor of the “ successful” inventor, (in which he said of his 
 intellectual offspring, “It found a friend in Mr. Alfred Vail, of New Jersey, who with 
 his father and brother furnished the means to give the child a decent dress ;”) makes 
 the comment, “It would have been more magnanimous if in those last days of the 
 aged savant he had stated the precise facts, and given Alfred Vail the full credit to 
 which he was justly entitled. He would thus have generously raised a fitting rnonu- 
 to the memory of one who had years before ‘ been gathered to his fathers’ in the prime 
 of manhood, who had with wondrous modesty and singular reticence refrained from 
 claiming as of his own invention, the improved ‘Morse’ instrument .and alphabet.”^ 
 
 In again referring to this subject in his following sketch of the life of Vail, the 
 author adds, “ These are the quiet and subdued terms in which Professor Morse was 
 content to hand his co-inventor and early friend down to posterity. He makes no 
 allusion to Alfred Vail which would lead any one to suspect that he was anything 
 more than a skillful mechanic; — that Vail had ever done anything beyond putting 
 into form the conception of Morse’s brain. To say the least, it was an unhappy hold- 
 ing off from a magnanimous and generous course.”|| 
 
 *A collection of biographical notices, entitled Up the Heights of Fame and Fortune , 
 by F. B. Read, 8vo. Cincinnati, 1873, pp. 270, 271. Thirty-four pages are devoted to an 
 account of the life of Alfred Vail; who died at Morristown, January 18, 1859. 
 
 t Up the Heights of Fame a id Fortune , pp. 244, 245. 
 
 $ Quoted in same work : p. 291. § Same work : p. 244. 
 
 || Same work: p. 297. A friend of Mr. Vail, (unnamed,) who visited Professor 
 Morse at his request during his last illness in March, 1872, is reported as stating, “ In 
 
HENRY AND TIIE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 87 
 
 At a meeting- of the Directors of the “Magnetic Telegraph Company ” held at Phila- 
 delphia on the 16th of February, 1859, for the purpose of giving expression to their 
 feelings on the recent death of Alfred Yail (a brother Director), Amos Kendall in 
 seconding and warmly supporting the offered resolutions of respect and grief, is thus 
 reported: “ In the words of the distinguished associate and friend of both, the Hon. 
 Amos Kendall, ‘If justice be done, the name of Alfred Vail will forever stand associated 
 with that of Samuel F. B. Morse, in the history of the invention and introduction into 
 public use, of the Electro-magnetic Telegraph. . . . Mr. Vail was one of the most 
 
 honest and scrupulously conscientious men with whom it has ever been my fortune to 
 meet.’ ”* 
 
 Surely it is time that Alfred Vail should receive the tardy justice of some public 
 acknowledgment of his very ingenious and meritorious inventions in telegraphy, and 
 of grateful remembrance particularly for his valuable contribution to the “Morse 
 system” of its practically most important element. 
 
 NOTE H. (From p. 60.) 
 
 . AN UNWARRANTED ARRAIGNMENT. 
 
 Henry, elected December 3, 1846, to the position of “Secretary” and Director 
 jf the Smithsonian Institution, was for ten years engaged in a difficult but resolute 
 draggle to impress upon its administration his own sagacious and far-sighted pol- 
 icy ; at that time but little appreciated by the vast majority of those who wielded 
 political or literary influence. It was during the latter portion of this critical period, 
 while still almost entirely abstracted from his favorite pursuits, that he was made the 
 subject of a most wanton, unprovoked, and unlooked-for aspersion. In this ill-advised 
 attack— elaborately prepared either by or for Professor Morse, more than a year before 
 its wide-spread publication, t the pamphleteer not only boldly assailed the scien- 
 tific reputation of the great experimental physicist, but ventured (for the first 
 time in the latter’s career) to impugn his truthfulness, in an important testimony 
 |iven in certain telegraph suits, some half a dozen years previously, in reluctant 
 obedience to legal summons.! This testimony thus exacted, of course failed to 
 iustaintliecomplainant’s.exorbitant claims to all possible forms of the electro-magnetic 
 (telegraph, and correspondingly failed to satisfy the cupidity of the actual prosecutors ; 
 md in this remarkable accusation, first published in 1855, could readily be discerned 
 he mercenary inspiration of interested capitalists and assignees— anxious only to 
 itretch the monopoly to its extremest grasp. To Professor Morse himself, in his early 
 dforts, Henry had generously rendered every encouragement and assistance; and in 
 
 l conversation of two hours, he several times said, ‘The one thing I want to do now, is 
 ustice to Mr. Vail.’ .* . . Just four weeks from that day, he passed from earth; 
 
 md I have never heard that he left one word for it. Indeed, I did not expect that he 
 would.” To this statement, Mr. Read adds, “Here we leave Professor Morse and his 
 -elations to Alfred Vail. Our only purpose has been simply to bring the facts concern - 
 ng this wonderful invention, to the light of day. (Same page of the work : — p. 297. ) 
 
 * Same work : p. 296. 
 
 t Professor Morse’s signature upon the last page of the Impeachment (p. 98), is 
 lated December, 1853. The pamphlet was published January, 1855. 
 
 + The Hon. S. P. Chase, while Governor of Ohio, (subsequently Chief Justice of the 
 supreme Cpurt of the United States,) in a letter to Henry, dated Columbus, November 
 56, 1856, after reciting his professional connection with the litigations of 1849, says : 
 
 ‘ I remember very well that you were unwilling to be involved in the controversy 
 iven as a witness, and that you only submitted to be examined in compliance with 
 he requirements of law. Not one of your statements was volunteered; they were 
 <11 called out by questions propounded either verbally or in writing. . . . You 
 
 ould not have refused to respond to the questions propounded without subjecting 
 ■ourself to judicial animadversion and constraint. Nothing in what you testified, or 
 r our manner of testifying, suggested to me the idea that you were animated by any 
 esire to arrogate undue merit to yourself, or to detract from the just claims of Pro- 
 fessor Morse. ’ 
 
88 
 
 HENRY AND T1IE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 his later successes had as freely extended his congratulations and his testimonials of 
 the practical merits of his invention.* 
 
 To descend to a personal controversy with Mr. Morse, was utterly repugnant to 
 Henry’s feelings ; to permit his serious impeachment to stand untraversed, appeared 
 scarcely less objectionable. ^ With a calm and self-respecting, dignity, Henry simply 
 presented the published arraignment to the Board of Regents, for their consideration 
 and action, with a communication dated March 16, 1857, in the following terms: 
 
 “Gentlemen : In the discharge of the important and responsible duties which de- 
 volve upon me as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, I have found myself exposed, 
 like other men in public positions, to unprovoked attack and injurious misrepresenta- 
 tion. Many instances of this it may be remembered occurred about two years ago, 
 during the discussions relative to the organic policy of the Institution ; but though 
 very unjust, they were suffered to pass unnoticed, and generally made I presume no 
 lasting impression on the public mind. During the same controversy however there 
 was one attack made upon me of such a nature, so elaborately prepared and widely 
 circulated by my opponents, that though I have not yet publicly noticed it, I have 
 from the first thought it my duty not to allow it to go unanswered. I allude to an 
 article from the pen of Prof. S. F. B. Morse, the celebrated inventor of. the American 
 electro-magnetic telegraph. In this, not my scientific reputation merely, but my moral 
 character was pointedly assailed ; indeed, nothing less was attempted than to prove 
 that in the testimony which I had given in a case where I was at most but a reluctant 
 witness, I had consciously and willfully deviated from the truth, and this too from 
 unworthy and dishonorable motives. 
 
 “Such a charge, coming from such a quarter, appeared to me then, as it appears 
 now, of too grave a character and too serious a consequence to be withheld from the 
 notice of the Board of Regents. I therefore presented the matter unofficially to the 
 Chancellor of the Institution, Chief Justice Taney, and was advised by him to allow 
 the matter to rest until the then existing excitement with respect to the organization of 
 the Institution should subside ; . . . and I now embrace the first opportunity of bring- 
 ing the subject officially to your notice, and asking from you an investigation into the 
 justice of the charges alleged against me. And this I do most earnestly, with the de- 
 sire that when we shall all have passed from this stage of being, no imputation of having 
 attempted to evade in silence so grave a charge shall rest on me,* — nor on you , of having 
 continued to devolve upon me duties of the highest responsibility, after that was known 
 to some of you individually, which if true should render mo entirely unworthy of 
 your confidence. Duty to the Board of Regents, as well as regard to my own memory, 
 to my family, and to the truth of history, demands that I should lay this matter be- 
 fore you, and place in your hands the documents necessary to establish the veracity of 
 my testimony so falsely impeached, and the integrity of my motives so wantonly as- 
 sailed.”! 
 
 A select committee of the Board of Regents having accordingly been appointed to 
 examine fully into the imputations referred to, and thereupon to report the conclusion 
 reached, — after a careful consideration of all the evidence and documents accessible, 
 presented through its chairman, President Felton, of Harvard University, a compre- 
 hensive report, from which the following extracts are made : 
 
 “ The committee have carefully examined the documents relating to the subject, and 
 especially the article to which the communication of Professor Henry refers. This ar- 
 ticle occupies over ninety pages, and purports to be La defense against the injurious 
 
 * “ It was my wish in every statement to render Mr. Morse full and scrupulous jus- 
 tice. While I w r as constrained therefore to state that he had made no discoveries in 
 science, I distinctly declared that he was entitled to the merit of combining and ap- 
 plying the discoveries of others in the invention of the best practical form of the 
 magnetic telegraph. My testimony tended to establish the fact that though not emti- 
 tled to the exclusive use of the electro-magnet for telegraphic purposes, he was enti- 
 tled to his particular machine, register, alphabet, &c. This however did not meet 
 the full requirements of Mr. Morse’s comprehensive claim.” 
 
 t Smithsonian Report for 1857, pp. 85, 86. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 89 
 
 deductions drawn from the deposition of Prof. Joseph Henry (in the several telegraph 
 suits), with a critical review of said deposition, and an examination of Professor Hen- 
 ry’s alleged discoveries hearing upon the electro-magnetic telegraph.’ The first thing 
 which strikes the reader of this article is, that its title is a misnomer. It is simply an 
 assault upon Professor Henry.; an attempt to disparage his character; to deprive him 
 of his honors as a scientific discoverer ; to impeach his credibility as a witness, and his 
 integrity as a man. It is a disingenuous piece of sophistical argument, such as an un- 
 scrupulous advocate might employ to pervert the truth, misrepresent the facts, and 
 misinterpret the language in which the facts belonging to the other side of the case 
 are stated. 
 
 “Mr. Morse charges that the deposition of Professor Henry ‘ contains imputations 
 against his (Morse’s) personal character,’ whiclf it does not, and assumes it as a duty ‘to 
 expose the utter non-reliability of Professor Henry’s testimony ;’ that testimony being 
 supported by the most competent authorities, and by the history of scientific discov- 
 ery. He asserts that he ‘is not indebted to him [Professor Henry] for any discovery 
 in science bearing on the telegraph,’ he having himself acknowledged such indebted- 
 ness in the most unequivocal manner, and the fact being independently substantiated 
 by the testimony of Sears C. Walker, and the statement of Mr. Morse’s own associate, 
 Dr. L. D. Gale. Mr. Morse further maintains that all discoveries bearing upon the tele- 
 graph were made not by Professor Henry, but by others, and prior to any experiments 
 of Professor Henry in the science of electro-magnetism ; contradicting in this proposi- 
 tion the facts in the history of scientific discovery perfectly established and recognized 
 throughout the scientific world. 
 
 “The essence of the charges against Professor Henry is, that he gave false testimony 
 in his deposition in the telegraph cases, and that he has claimed the credit of discov- 
 eries in the sciences bearing upon the electro-magnetic telegraph which were made by 
 previous investigators; in other words, that he has falsely claimed what does not be- 
 long to him, but does belong to others. . . . Your committee do not conceive it to 
 
 be necessary to follow Mr. Morse through all the details of his elaborate attack. For- 
 tunately, a plain statement of a few leading facts will be sufficient to place the essen- 
 tial points of the case in. a clear light.” . . . 
 
 [After a review of the evidences furnished (unnecessary to be here reproduced), the 
 report proceeds : ] 
 
 “It thus appears, both from Mr. Morse’s own admission down to 1848, and from the 
 testimony of others most familiar with the facts, that Professor Henry discovered the 
 law, or ‘principle,’ as Mr. Morse designates it, which was necessary to make the prac- 
 tical working of the electro-magnetic telegraph at considerable distances possible ; that 
 Mr. Morse was first informed of this discovery by Dr. Gale; that he availed himself of 
 it at once, and that it never occurred to Mr. Morse to deny this fact until after 1848. 
 He had steadily and fully acknowledged the merits and genius of Mr. Henry, as the 
 discoverer of facts and laws in science of the highest importance in the success of his 
 long-cherished invention of a magnetic telegraph. Mr. Henry was the discoverer of a 
 principle, Mr. Morse was the inventor of a machine, the object of which was to record 
 characters at a distance, to convey intelligence ; in other words to carry into execu- 
 tion the idea of an electric telegraph. But there were obstacles in the way which he 
 could not overcome until he learned the discoveries of Professor Henry, and applied 
 them to his machine. These facts are undeniable.’ They constitute a part of the his- 
 tory of science and invention. They were true in 1848, they were equally true in 1855, 
 when Professor Morse’s article was published. . . . 
 
 “What changed Mr. Morse’s opinion of Professor Henry, not only as a scientific in- 
 vestigator, but as a man of integrity, after the admissions of his indebtedness to his 
 researches, and the oft-repeated expressions of warm personal regard ? It appears 
 that Mr. Morse was involved in a number of lawsuits, growing out of contested claims 
 to the right of using electricity for telegraphic purposes. The circumstances under 
 which Professor Henry, as a well-known investigator in this department of physics, 
 was summoned by one of the parties to testify have already been stated. The testi- 
 
90 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 mony of Mr. Henry, while supporting tlie claims of Mr. Morse as the inventor of an 
 admirable invention, denied to him the additional merit of being a discoverer of new 
 facts or laws of nature, and to this extent perhaps was considered unfavorable to 
 some part of the claim of Mr. Morse to an exclusive right to employ the electro-magnet 
 for telegraphic purposes. Professor Henry’s deposition consists of a series of answers 
 to verbal, as well as written, interrogatories propounded to him, which were not 
 limited to his published writings, or the subject of electricity, but extended to investi- 
 gations and discoveries in general having a bearing upon the electric telegraph. He 
 gave his testimony at a distance from his notes and manuscripts, and it would not 
 have been surprising if inaccuracies had occurred in some parts of his statement; but 
 all the material points in it are sustained by independent testimony, and that portion 
 which relates directly to Mr. Morse agrees entirely with the statement of his own 
 assistant. Dr. Gale. Had his deposition been objectionable, it ought to have been im- 
 peached before the court ; but this was not attempted ; and the following tribute to 
 Professor Henry by the judge, in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, indicates th# impression made upon the court itself by all the testimony 
 in the case: ‘ It is due to him to say that no one lias contributed more to enlarge the 
 knowledge of electro-magnetism, and to lay the foundations of the great inventions 
 of which we are speaking, than the Professor himself. ’” 
 
 The committee, in summing up the various testimonies, justly declare of Professor 
 Henry, that “lie has freely communicated information to those who have sought it 
 from him, among whom lias been Mr. Morse himself, as appears by his own acknowl- 
 edgments. But he has never applied his scientific discoveries to practical ends for his 
 own pecuniary benefit. It was natural therefore that he should feel a repugnance to 
 taking any part in the litigation between rival inventors, and it was inevitable that 
 when forced to give his testimony, he should distinctly point out what was so clear in 
 his own mind and is so fundamental a fact in the history of human progress, the dis- 
 tinctive functions of the discoverer, and the inventor who applies discoveries to prac- 
 tical purposes in the business of life. 
 
 “Mr. Henry has always done full justice to the invention of Mr. Morse. While he 
 could not sanction the claim of Mr. Morse to the exclusive use of the electro-magnet, he 
 has given him full credit for the mechanical contrivances adapted to the application 
 of his invention. . . . 
 
 “ Your committee come unhesitatingly to the conclusion that Mr. Morse has failed to 
 substantiate any one of the charges he lias made against Professor Henry, although 
 the burden of proof lay upon him ; and that all the evidence, including the unbiased 
 admissions of Mr. Morse himself, is on the other side. Mr. Morse’s charges not only 
 remain unproved, but they are positively disproved. 
 
 “Your committee recommend the adoption of the following resolutions: 
 
 “ Resolved , That Professor Morse has not succeeded in refuting the statements of 
 Professor Henry in the deposition given by the latter in 1849, that he has not proved 
 any one of the accusations against Professor Henry, and that he has not disproved any 
 one of his own admissions in regard to Professor Henry’s discoveries in electro- 
 magnetism, and their importance to his own invention of the electro-magnetic tele- 
 graph. 
 
 “ Resolved , That there is nothing in Professor Morse’s article that diminishes in the 
 least, the confidence of this Board in the integrity of Professor Henry, or in the value 
 of those great discoveries which have placed his name among those ol the most dis- 
 tinguished cultivators of science, and have done so much to exalt the scientific repu- 
 tation of the country. 
 
 “ Resolved , That this report, with the resolutions, be recorded in the Proceedings of 
 the Board of Regents of the Institution.” 
 
 The report was accepted, and the resolutions were unanimously adopted by the 
 
 Board of Regents. * 
 
 * Smithsonian Report for 1857, pp. 88-98. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 91 
 
 NOTE I. (From p. 02.) 
 
 OVERSTATEMENT OF MORSE’S INVENTION. 
 
 It was perhaps to have been expected that the owners of the Morse patents, know- 
 ing the influence which the unbiased opinions of Henry (subpoenaed as an expert) un- 
 doubtedly exercised upon the minds and decisions of the justices before whom the 
 telegraph suits were brought for trial, should regard with much stronger feeling what 
 seemed to them adverse in his testimony, than what was really favorable to their inter- 
 ests. But that the sweeping assumptions advanced by the claimants were unwar- 
 rantable, has been distinctly affirmed by the highest judicial authority. 
 
 Justice Woodbury, presiding at the United States Circuit Court (Massachusetts), in 
 his decision in 1850, in the case, of “ Smith vs. Downing and others,” remarked of the 
 successive reissues of the original Morse patent, with expanding claims : “ In his last 
 renewal of 1848 there are introduced for the first time some changes of language, and 
 some tendencies in a part of them (as well as in some of the arguments) to make the 
 claim broader, and as in the letter just quoted, to cover all applications of electro- 
 magnetism, if not of electricity, to convey intelligence, or to telegraph to a distance. 
 
 . . . ,As this broader claim goes far beyond what we have already seen was that 
 
 made in the caveat and in the first specification and in the original patent, as well as 
 in all the subsequent renewals ; as it conflicts with much of the language of this very 
 last renewal, looking only to a new method and a mere improvement on what existed 
 before ; and as he seems to disavow it in his own evidence ; and as on everything in 
 the case, it is at least questionable whether he could have intended to patent anything 
 except an improvement on what before existed, I do not think it just to place a broader 
 construction on his language than the whole subject-matter and description and nature 
 of the case seem to indicate as designed. . . . And I the more readily adopt this 
 
 course for his own protection, as such broader view might subject his patent to be 
 considered void, both for claiming too much, and for claiming also the invention of 
 a mere principle. It would be claiming too much, as it would cover the application 
 in everyway — of electro-magnetism to telegraphs; when this as will be seen here- 
 after by the history of this subject, and as is sworn to by a large number of highly in- 
 telligent experts, had been known publicly and for years before Morse’s first attention 
 to the subject in 1832. Indeed he himself virtually admits the truth of this in his 
 testimony. Others no less than the persons cited, as well as the history of the pro- 
 gress on this subject, show that several had before Morse not only made this discovery, 
 but applied both electricity and electro-magnetism to the purpose of telegraphing. 
 But if by his alphabet and record, he has been successful in making an improvement 
 in the use of electricity for that purpose, and wished to secure the new method of 
 doing it, he was at liberty in point of law to make out a patent for that new mode ; but 
 for nothing more. He came into the world too late for truly claiming much as new. 
 A large galaxy of discoverers on this subject had preceded him.” 
 
 To a similar purport was the language of Chief Justice Taney of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States in his final decision in the case of “ O’Reilly and others vs. Morse 
 and others which however went so far as to condemn as untenable the substance 
 of the eighth claim introduced by Morse’s reissued patent of 1848. The Chief Justice 
 said: “It is impossible to misunderstand the extent of this claim. He claims the ex- 
 clusive right to every improvement, when the motive power is the electric or galvanic 
 current, and the result is the marking or printing intelligible characters signs or let- 
 ters at a distance. . . . The patent confers on him the exclusive right to use the 
 
 means he specifies to produce the result or effect he describes, — and nothing more. 
 
 . . . Indeed, if the eighth claim of the patentee can be maintained, there was no 
 
 necessity for any specification further than to say that he had discovered that by 
 using the motive power of electro-magnetism he could print intelligible characters at 
 a distance. We presume that it will be admitted on all hands, that no patent could 
 have issued on such a specification.”* 
 
 *Hoivard , s Reports, vol. xv, pp. 112-119. 
 
92 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 NOTE J. (From p. 62.) 
 henry’s appreciation of professor morse. 
 
 Although Henry (together with several other eminent physicists and electricians,) 
 was summoned by the contestants of Professor Morse’s patent, his testimony tended 
 probably quite as much to sustain what appeared to him the patentee’s equitable 
 claims, as to restrain his overshadowing pretensions. That both before and after 
 these legal controversies, Henry cherished only kindly feelings toward Professor 
 Morse, the following correspondence will sufficiently attest. 
 
 At the close of October, 1837, Henry had learned from Professor Gale, with a natu- 
 rally warm interest, of his success in operating the Morse recorder by a proper adjust- 
 ment of the length of coil on his Henry magnet, and a battery of 87 cells (each hav- 
 ing about 14 square inches of zinc surface), through the length of five miles of cotton- 
 wrapped copper wire (one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter), coiled on a large reel.* 
 And on the 13th of November following, he was informed of his further success in in- 
 terposing a second similar reel of wire (making ten miles) in the circuit, with but 
 little diminution of effect. 
 
 In the following year, 1838, Henry, during his elaborate and profound researches 
 on electrical “induction” (since become classical), desired to borrow one of these five- 
 mile reels of wire, for the purpose of pressing his inquiries to their furthest extent. Pro- 
 fessor Morse being then absent in Europe, his colleague Professor Gale very cheerfully 
 lent the wire. On returning the borrowed wire in 1839, Henry, in acknowledgment 
 of the courtesy, sent both to Professor Gale and to Professor Morse a copy of his 
 memoir (read before the American Philosophical Society, November 2, 1838), “ with the 
 respects of the author.” 
 
 Professor Morse, on his return, addressed a letter to Henry, dated New York, April 
 24, 1839, in which he said : 
 
 “ My Dear Sir : On my return a few days since from Europe, I found directed to 
 me, through your politeness, a copy of your valuable “ Contributions,” for which I beg 
 you to accept my warmest thanks. . . . 
 
 “I was glad to learn, by a letter received in Paris from Dr. Gale, that a spool of five 
 miles of my wire was loaned to you, and I perceive that you have already made some 
 interesting experiments with it. In the absence of Dr. Gale, who has gone South, I feel a 
 great desire to consult some scientific gentleman on points of importance bearing on my 
 telegraph. I should be exceedingly happy to see you, and am tempted to break away 
 from my absorbing engagements here to find you at Princeton. In case I should be able 
 to visit Princeton for a few days, a week or two hence, how should I find you engaged ? 
 . . . I have many questions to ask, but should be happy in your reply to this letter 
 
 of an answer to this general one : Have you met with any facts in your experiments 
 thus far that would lead you to think that my mode of telegraphic communication will 
 prove impracticable ? . . . I think that you have pursued an original course of 
 
 experiment, and discovered facts of more value to me than any that have been pub- 
 lished abroad. I will not trouble you at this time with my questions until I know 
 your engagements. Accompanying this is a copy of a report made by the Academy 
 of Industry, of Paris, on my Telegraph, which I beg you to accept. 
 
 “ Believe me dear sir, 
 
 “ With the highest respect, 
 
 “ Your most obedient servant, 
 
 “Samuel F. B. Morse.” 
 
 * This coil of wire, wound on a small axis of iron, formed a solid cylinder eighteen 
 inches long and thirteen inches in diameter. Professor Gale’s preparation for this 
 experiment was noticed in Silliman’s Am. Journal of Science (October, 1837, vol. xxxiii, 
 p. 187). And Professor Morse, in a letter to Mr. A. Vail, dated October 7, 1837, con- 
 gratulated himself that “Professor Gale’s services will be invaluable to us, and I am 
 glad that he is disposed to enter into the matter with zeal.” 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 93 
 
 To this letter Henry replied as follows: 
 
 Princeton, May 6, 1839. 
 
 Dear Sir : Your favor of the 24th ultimo came to Princeton during my absence, 
 which will account for the long delay of my answer. I am pleased to learn that you 
 fully sanction the loan which I obtained from Dr. Gale of your wire ; and I shall he 
 happy if any of the results are found to have a practical hearing on the electrical tele- 
 graph. It will give me much pleasure to see you in Princeton after this week; my en- 
 gagements will not then interfere with our communications on the subject of electric- 
 ity. I am acquainted with no fact which would lead me to suppose that the project 
 of the electro-magnetic telegraph is impracticable ; on the contrary, I believe that sci- 
 ence is now ripe for the application, and that there are no difficulties in the way, but 
 such as ingenuity and enterprise may obviate. But what form of the apparatus, or 
 what application of. the power, will prove best, can I believe be only determined by 
 careful experiment. I can say however that so far as I am acquainted with the mi- 
 nutiae of your plan, I see no practical difficulty in the way of its application for com- 
 paratively short distances ; * but if the length of the wire between the stations be 
 great, I think that some other modification will be found necessary in order to develop 
 a sufficient power at the farther end of the line.t I shall however be happy to con- 
 verse freely with you on these points when we meet. In the meantime, I remain, 
 
 “ With much respect, 
 
 “ Yours, &.C., 
 
 “Joseph Henry.” 
 
 A short time after this, Professor Morse visited Henry at Princeton; and during this 
 first personal interview in May, 1839, received satisfactory answers to various ques- 
 tions presented. Among them, Henry stated that he had no reason to doubt that 
 magnetism could be induced in soft iron “at the distance of a hundred miles or more 
 by a single impulse or from a single battery (a striking expression of faith in his 
 own “intensity” magnet :) also, that with a given battery, circuit, and electro-magnet 
 at a distance, the inclusion of intermediate electro-magnets at way-stations would 
 not sensibly reduce the magnetic power at the several points. On the subject of the 
 differences between “quantity” and “intensity” magnets, Professor Morse was still 
 greatly in the dark, and he asked the question, “Is it quantity or intensity which has 
 most effect in inducing magnetism in soft iron?” Henry fully explained to him that 
 for producing the greatest magnetic effects, a “ quantity” magnet and battery, with 
 short and free circuit, were required ; but that for a long circuit (required for magnet- 
 izing at a distance), an “intensity” magnet and battery were indispensable . X 
 
 * [It must be borne in mind that this was a year and a half after the writer had been 
 informed by Dr. Gale of his successful experiment through ten miles of wire. By 
 “comparatively short distances,” therefore, he must evidently have intended distances 
 less than those separating our principal cities.] 
 t[The peculiar form of expression here used, suggesting the probable occasion for 
 another modification “in order to develop a sufficient power— at the farther end of the 
 line,” points directly to his own contrivance (exhibited before his classes, four years 
 previously) of a supplemental “quantity” magnet and battery at the distant station. 
 Henry had no doubt of being able to magnetize iron at a distance of several hundred 
 miles, and hence evidently did not contemplate dividing the line into a “relay” of 
 circuits, as devised by Professor Morse. His language that a re-enforcement may be 
 necessary “ if the length of the mire between the stations be great,” plainly shows this. 
 But he anticipated that the attractive power developed would be feeble ; while he de- 
 clared his confidence that there were no scientific “ difficulties in the way.” Surprise 
 has been expressed that Henry did not frankly give Professor Morse the benefit of this 
 solution of the suggested difficulty, if it were then in his mind. But is not the subsequent 
 reticence of Professor Morse, on the expedient of a “relay” (invented by him two 
 years previously, as alleged), much more surprising ? Henry referred to the enfeeble- 
 ment on a long line, as a merely “practical difficulty” easily “obviated by ingenuity.”] 
 X Of the communications made on the occasion of this very interesting and impor- 
 tant interview, occupying an “afternoon and evening,” we have unfortunately only 
 the result furnished by Professor Morse’s very meager statement. (Prime’s Life of 
 Morse, chap, x, p. 422.) That Henry, in explaining the differing functions of the two 
 
94 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 During tlie long and weary interval in which Professor Morse — with hope deferred — 
 was unavailingly prosecuting his memorial to Congress for assistance, Henry wrote to 
 him the following encouraging and friendly letter: 
 
 “ Princeton College, February 24, 1342. 
 
 “My Dear Sin : I am pleased to learn that you have again petitioned Congress in 
 reference to your telegraph, and I most sincerely hope you will succeed in convincing 
 our representatives of the importance of the invention. In this you may perhaps 
 find some difficulty; since in the minds of many, the electro-magnetic telegraph is 
 associated with the various chimerical projects constantly presented to the public, 
 and particularly with the schemes so popular a year or two ago, for the application of 
 electricity as a moving power in the arts. The case is however entirely different in 
 regard to the electro-magnetic telegraph. Science is now fully ripe for this applica- 
 tion, and I have not the least doubt, if proper means be afforded, Qf the perfect suc- 
 cess of the invention. The idea of transmitting intelligence to a distance by means 
 of electrical action lias been suggested by various persons from the time of Franklin 
 to the present ; but until wdthin the last few years, or since the principal discoveries 
 in electro-magnetism, all attempts to reduce it to practice were necessarily unsuccess- 
 ful. The mere suggestion however of a scheme of this kind, is a matter for which 
 little credit can be claimed, since it is one which would naturally arise in the mind 
 of almost any person familiar with the phenomena of electricity ; but the bringing 
 it forward at the proper moment, when the developments of science are able to furnish 
 the means of certain success, and the devising a plan for carrying it into practical 
 operation, are the grounds of a just claim to scientific reputation as well as to public 
 patronage. About the same time with yourself, Professor Wheatstone, of London, 
 and Dr. Steinheil, of Germany, proposed plans of the electro-magnetic telegraph ; but 
 these differ as much from yours as the nature of the common principle would well 
 permit : and unless some essential improvements have lately been made in these 
 European plans, I should prefer the one invented by yourself. 
 
 “ With my best wishes for your success, I remain, with much esteem, 
 
 “Yours truly, 
 
 “Joseph Henry.” 
 
 Professor Morse’s biographer, in reproducing this letter, makes the comment : “This 
 was the most encouraging communication Professor Morse received during the dark 
 ages between 1839, and 1843.” And he again notices it on a subsequent page : “ In 
 the summer of 1842, Professor Morse communicated to the Hon. W. W. Boardman, 
 member of the House of Representatives in Congress, the encouraging letter from Pro- 
 fessor Henry, of February 24, 1842.”* And when on December 30, of 1842, the Hon. 
 Charles G. Ferris, of New York, reported in the House of Representatives the bill au- 
 thorizing the construction of the telegraph, this justly valued testimonial of Henry, 
 accompanied Professor Morse’s memorial. The Hon. Fernando Wood, of New York (a 
 colleague of Mr. Ferris), in reviewing the history of that enactment some thirty years 
 later, (on the occasion of the memorial proceedings at the Capitol in honor of Professor 
 Morse,) did not forget to remark: “With this letter [from Professor Morse] was an- 
 other to him from Prof. Joseph Henry, now of the Smithsonian Institution, and then 
 of Princeton College, indorsing and sustaining the application. Professor Henry was 
 deemed high authority on all scientific subjects generally, and especially upon this, to 
 which he had devoted much attention, being himself a successful investigator in elec- 
 tro-magnetic science.”! The bill of Mr. Ferris passed the House of Representatives, 
 
 kinds of magnets, would have unfolded the utility of the “quantity” magnet as a 
 terminal re-enforcement of a long “intensity” line, seems highly probable, — if not 
 almost inevitable. If Professor Morse did not profit by it, or failed rightly to appre- 
 hend it, this may be explained by his possible preoccupation with the project of 
 dividing a long line into a succession of “relays.” 
 
 ^Prime’s Life of Morse, chap, x, pp. 423 and 433. 
 
 t Memorial of F. S. B. Morse, April 16, 1872, Washington, 1875, p. 79. 
 
HENRY AND TIIE TELEGRAPH. 95 
 
 February 23, 1843; aucl the Morse appropriation was secured, by passing the Senate, 
 March 3, 1843. 
 
 Very shortly after this successful issue, Prof. James C. Fisher, who in the absence 
 of Dr. Gale had taken his place in assisting Professor Morse, wrote to Henry explain- 
 ing the method proposed for insulating the wires and laying the line of conductors 
 underground, and asking advice as to the best method of wrapping. To this commu- 
 nication Henry replied by letter dated — 
 
 “Princeton, April 17, 1843. 
 
 “ Dear Sir : A friend ot mine in Trenton has a machine for winding wire of which 
 he promised to give a description. I will write to you on the subject and send you a 
 copy of his answer. Tlip greatest practical difficulty you will have to contend with, 
 I should think, will be the insula tign of the wires. Twine is a partial conductor, and 
 by making the surface sufficiently extended, .lateral transmission will take place to 
 some extent. The loss however on this account can only be determined by direct 
 experiment with extended wire. It will probably increase with an increasing ratio ; 
 first on account of the greater surface of contact, and secondly because electricity 
 of greater tension will be required to send the current through the longer wire. In 
 order to diminish the number of points of contact, it might perhaps be Avell to wrap 
 around each wire— besides its continuous covering, an extra strand of coarse twine, 
 with the several turns at a distance from each other. . . .” 
 
 When Professor Morse, in August, 1843, received 160 miles of covered copper wire, 
 designed to form two independent circuits, each of a double line of 40 miles in extent, 
 to reach from Washington to Baltimore (one pair for the outgoing circuit and the other 
 for the return circuit), he invited Henry and others to be present at a preliminary ex- 
 periment in New York City, on the 8th of August, to test the capacity of electrical 
 transmission . This very interesting trial with so unusual a length of conductor would 
 
 for the first time decide the correctness of Henry’s opinion that magnetization could be 
 
 effected “ at the distance of a hundred miles or more by a single impulse.” This crit- 
 ical test never befoie attempted, Henry was unfortunately prevented from witnessing 
 by reason of his professional duties. The experiment w r as eminently successful with 
 a battery of 100 Grove elements; and the magnet was operative with even half that 
 n umber. The following letter to Professor Morse expressed Henry’s regrets at being 
 compelled to miss such an opportunity : 
 
 “Princeton, Augusts, 1843. 
 
 “My Dear Sir : I hope you will pardon me for not before acknowledging the receipt 
 of your kind letters of invitation to attend your galvanic exhibition. My time has 
 been so much occupied during the last three weeks with an extra course of lectures 
 and our examination, and so little at my own disposal, that I was unable to say 
 whether I could be in the city on the day you mentioned or not. I did hope however 
 to get a"w ay, but the examination prevented. Dr. Torrey was also engaged, and could 
 not leave. I do not know however that I could have done much in the way of orig- 
 inal experiments in the course of a single day. I am not quick in the process of in- 
 venting experiments unless my mind is thoroughly aroused to the subject by several 
 days’ exclusive attention to the work, and then I am obliged to pause between each 
 effort. # I have not been able since I last saw you to devise a satisfactory process for 
 determining the velocity of galvanic electricity; and on reflection I did not. think it 
 worth the expense which would be incurred, to have a machine constructed for the 
 mere repetition of the experiments of Wheatstone. 
 
 “ I think it probable that I shall visit the city next week, as I shall be unemployed 
 from this time until a week from next Monday. If there is any prospect of your 
 
 ind |™ tion of the lo £ ical care bestowed by Henry on his experimental work an 
 the key to Ins successes. He had little confidence in the profit of empirical or “ hai 
 hazard” trials.] 1 1 
 
96 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 repeating any of your experiments previous to that time, I will he with j^ou on any 
 day you may appoint. 
 
 “With much respect and esteem, 
 
 “ Yours truly, 
 
 “Joseph Henry.” 
 
 The answer to this, or whether any further preliminary experiments were jointly 
 performed on the 160 miles of wire, does not appear. As the line of wires between 
 Washington and Baltimore was being laid, Henry, anxious to emphasize the importance 
 of keeping the separate wires at some distance apart throughout their circuit, ad- 
 dressed to Professor Morse the following friendly letter on the subject: 
 
 “Princeton, January 24, 1844. 
 
 “My Dear Sir: I am anxious to hear from you in reference to the telegraph, and 
 I have intended to write to you on the subject for a month past, but extra college 
 duties have occupied all my thoughts and all my time since the beginning of the 
 present term. During the last vacation I occupied myself as usual with my investi- 
 gations in electricity, and among other results, I arrived at one which I think may 
 have an important bearing on the success of the telegraph. It is this: while a current 
 of electricity is passing through a wire, one part of the conductor is constantly plus to 
 any other part which succeeds it, the difference in the degree of the electrical state 
 constantly increasing as the distance of the two points is greater. The maximum 
 difference is therefore at the two ends ; and when the two extremities of long wires 
 are brought into near approximation, there is a great tendency in the elecricity to cut 
 across from the one to the other. This tendency is not due as has been supposed, 
 merely to the great resistance of the long wire and the cross-cut offering a less resist- 
 ing channel, but to the fact of the one part being positive and the other negative, and 
 t ie consequent great attraction of the electricity in the one part for the unsaturated 
 matter in the other. . . . On reading your letter on the subject of the telegraph 
 
 in the newspapers, I was struck with the idea that you had probably met Avitli the 
 very difficulty my researches have led me to anticipate. If this is the case, and 
 your insulation is not found sufficient, you have no cause to blame yourself, since the 
 p *e\’ious state of knowledge on the subject of electricity could not lead you to suspect 
 such a condition of things. 
 
 “With much respect, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 • • “Joseph Henry.” 
 
 The danger apprehended by Henry Avas realized ; and of the nine miles of quadruple 
 conductors laid in the ground, Professor Gale had already discovered that the galvanic 
 current could not be carried through a single mile; a result partly due to the injury 
 done to the insulation of the wires at some points, in the process of enveloping them 
 in a tube, and partly to the energetic induction from the “extra current” first dis- 
 covered by Henry. In a couple of weeks, Professor Morse wrote to Henry as follows : 
 
 “ Baltimore, February 7, 1844. 
 
 “My Dear Sir: You must think it strange that I have not answered your letter 
 of the 24th ultimo before this ; but I have this moment received it in passing through 
 this place on my way to New York, which I trust will be a sufficient apology for my 
 apparent neglect. I have read your letter with much interest, and it has determined 
 me to make you a visit on my return from New' York, which will be the beginning of 
 the week, perhaps on Tuesday morning, the 13th instant. ... I found the diffi- 
 culty Avhic-h you apprehend in the insulation of my wires; but this I will explain 
 when I have the pleasure of seeing you. 
 
 “In the mean time, belieA T e me, with sincere respect,. 
 
 “Your most obedient serA r ant, 
 
 “Samuel F. B. Morse.” 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 97 
 
 At his next interview with Henry on the 13th of February, 1844, (on his way from 
 New York,) he was advised to suspend his wires through the air on poles, at a suffi- 
 cient elevation to avoid injury from the recklessness of mischievous hoys: as Henry 
 feared that the risk of “cross-cut” on long lines, even with good insulation, was 
 scarcely avoidable.* * * § Henry also informed him that this plan had been successfully 
 adopted by Gauss and Weber ten years previously.. 
 
 Professor Morse, who had thought of this.method before, but with much distrust, at 
 once determined to carry it out, and early in the following month, March, made prepa- 
 rations for its execution. Two methods of suspension were suggested, the first plan 
 (that of Mr. Vail), the gathering of the four wrapped or insulated wires together at 
 their supports, requiring but a single insulator on each pole, to which Professor Morse 
 was himself inclined as involving least cost ; the second plan (that of Mr. Ezra Cor- 
 nell), the scattering of the wires, tud the supporting of them apart on independent 
 insulators. The following is Professor Morse’s account to Mr. Cornell of a second in- 
 terview and consultation with Henry on this subject, on the 1st of March, 1844, (on 
 big way back to New York,) which he inadvertently confounds with his preceding 
 interview two or three weeks earlier : 
 
 “ On my way to New York, where I went to order the fixtures, I stopped at Prince, 
 ton, and called on my old friend Professor Henry, who inquired how I was getting 
 along with my telegraph.! I explained to him the failure of the insulation in the 
 pipes, and stated that I had decided to place the wires on poles in the air. He then 
 inquired how I proposed to insulate the wires where they were attached to the poles. 
 [ showed him the model I had of Mr. Vail’s plan ; and he said : 1 It will not do ; you 
 will meet the same difficulty you had in the pipes.’ I then explained to him your 
 plan, which he said would answer.” X And this is the method since universally 
 adopted in this country. On the 24th of May following, the first message was sent 
 aver the completed telegraph line by Professor Morse from ^Vashington to Baltimore, 
 md immediately repeated by Mr. Vail from Baltimore back to Washington. 
 
 The success of this new enterprise (foreseen, encouraged, and promoted, by Henry) 
 having been assured, various competitors sprang up as usual, (with similar and with 
 lissimilar systems,) to share in its benefits and profits ; and in a few years numerous 
 litigations arose in resistance of real or supposed infringements. Notwithstanding 
 :lie zeal and bitterness infused into these controversies by interested partisans, Henry 
 never lost his interest in the success of Professor Morse’s plan of telegraphing ; but 
 w bile desirous that meritorious rival schemes (such as that of the printing telegraph, 
 —first invented by Alfred Vail, in September, 1837, and developed by Royal E. House 
 in 1846, to a practical operation) should have a fair trial, he steadily refused to be 
 nade a party to any such discussions ; until at last he was summoned by subpcena to 
 attend a trial at Boston, to testify to the pre-existing state of the art. § In occupying 
 
 * “Mr. Morse visited me at Princeton to consult me on the arrangement of his con- 
 luctors. During this visit we conversed freely on the subject of insulation and con- 
 luction of wires. I urged him to put his wires on poles.” (Smithsonian Report for 
 L857, pp. 112, 113. 
 
 t [Such an inquiry would appear superfluous in view of Professor Morse’s recent 
 letter dated February 7. The whole coloring of the interview is inaccurate. ] 
 
 t Prime’s Life of Morse, chap. xi. pp. 479, 480. A treatise on the “Telegraph,” just 
 published, gives the following account of the plan adopted: “An arm thirty inches 
 ong, with a piu at each end, bearing a glass bureau-knob, — an insulation proposed by 
 Vlr. Cornell and approved by Professor Henry, was secured to the upper end of each 
 pole. Around the bureau-kuobs the conducting wires were wrapped.” ( The Telegraph 
 in America. By James D. Reid. 8vo. New York, 1879, chap, xi, p. 116.) 
 
 § “A series of controversies and law-suits having arisen between rival claimants 
 'or telegraphic patents, I was repeatedly appealed to to act as expert and witness in 
 luch cases. This I uniformly declined to do, not wishing to be in any manner in- 
 volved in these litigations, but was finally compelled under legal process to return to 
 loston from Maine, (whither I had gone on a visit,) and to give evidence on the sub- 
 ect.” ( Smithsonian Report for 1857, p. 87.) 
 
 7 E T 
 
98 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 a position so distasteful to liis sensitive and generous nature, it may well he supposed 
 that however reserved and cautious his attitude, and whatever his preferences, the 
 answers (necessarily conscientious) drawn from him by skillful attorneys defending 
 the alleged infringements, and the coloring given to such answers in their elaborate* 
 arguments, would be little calculated to please the plaintiffs, — naturally intent on the 
 broadest scope and comprehension, of their claims. And from this time, Professor 
 Morse, under the misjudging influence of interested supporters, seemed to forget that 
 Henry had been among the most serviceable and unselfish of his many friends. 
 
 In 1854 Professor Morse’s patent (of fourteen years from 1840) was about expiring, 
 and an application for its extension for seven years longer, according to the provis- 
 ions of the law, was pending before the Hon. Charles Mason, — one of the most able, 
 conscientious, and indefatigable of Patent Office Commissioners. Inclined from the 
 testimony he had examined, to believe that the merits of Professor Morse’s invention 
 had been greatly overestimated, and that his patent from the breadth of interpreta- 
 tion it had received, was acting to some extent as an obstruction to further pro- 
 gress in the art, he consulted with his friend, Professor Henry, as to the independent 
 value of the Morse system, in view of the antecedent state of the art. Henry, with 
 no other sentiment than that of impartial arbitrator, represented that Professor 
 Morse, without the advantage of scientific culture, had the great merit of having 
 combined and of having energetically developed and established a system of electro- 
 magnetic telegraphy, in its method of signaling and of recording, the most efficient 
 of contemporary methods. He referred to the needle-telegraph of his personal friend, 
 Professor Wheatstone (whom he regarded as one of the most intelligent and ingenious 
 of modern physicists), as being in his judgment inferior practically to the Morse tele- 
 graph ; and he urged that care should be taken not to let the extravagant pretensions 
 of Professor Morse’s would-be friends lead to the opposite error of underrating an in- 
 vention which w«as certainly of far greater value to the community, than any remu- 
 neration which had yet been reaped by its author from the short-lived monopoly. 
 
 The application of the patentee was granted by the Commissioner ; and the patent 
 was legally extended for seven years from the 19th of June, 1854. Professor Morse, 
 in ignorance of this service, had at the time unfortunately written (or at least given 
 his signature to) the ungracious and ungrateful assault on Henry, as a pretender in 
 science, and a detractor of merit, when rising fame excited his envy. And early the 
 following year, to the injury of himself alone, had the stricture published in a pam- 
 phlet, and widely distributed. 
 
 As a sufficient corrective of the strange misconception of his disposition and motives, 
 Henry inquired of Judge Mason, if he recalled their interview on the question of ex- 
 tending the Morse patent ; and the Commissioner of Patents responded in the follow- 
 ing letter : 
 
 “United States Patent Office, March 31, 1856. 
 
 “Sir: Agreeably to your request, I now make the following statement : Some two 
 years since, when an appli cation was made for an extension of Professor Morse’s pat- 
 ent, I was for some time in doubt as to the propriety of making that extension. Under 
 these circumstances I consulted with several persons, and among others with yourself, 
 with a view particularly to ascertain the amount of invention fairly due to Professor 
 Morse. The result of my inquiries was such as to induce mq to grant the extension. 
 I will further say that this was in accordance with your express recommendation, and 
 that I was probably more influenced by this recommendation, and the information I 
 obtained from you, than by any other circumstance, in coming to that conclusion. 
 
 “ I am, sir, 
 
 “ Yours very respectfully, 
 
 “ Charles Maso-n.” 
 
 “Prof. J. Henry. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 99 ' 
 
 NOTE K. (From p. 65.) 
 
 THE HATE OF PROFESSOR MORSE’S “ RELAY.” 
 
 Although the depositions of Professor Morse, and of his principal assistant (given in 
 law suits more than ten years after the event), assign from memory as the date of inven- 
 tion of the “relay” the sj)ring of 1837, all the documentary evidence existing, points 
 rather to the spring of 1838, as the date of its inception. First, we should expect at 
 least a reference to this device in the article prepared for Silliman’s Journal of Spetemher, 
 
 1837, in announcing the intention of experimenting with “a circuit of several miles.” 
 Secondly, we should certainly expect to find it spoken of as a saving expedient in 
 the caveat of October 3, 1837, if it were at that time in the author’s mind, and he were 
 desirous of protecting it. Thirdly, we should expect to find it unavoidably brought 
 forward (at least as a suggestion) before the committee of the Franklin Institute, 
 February 8, 1838, when the doubt was expressly discussed in the committee’s report as 
 to the practicable distance to which the telegraph could be made to signal. This con- 
 spiracy of silence, this conspicuous absence (in every published case) of the slightest 
 hint upon the subject, although so directly prompted and invited, is difficult ( ex post 
 facto) to account for. The earliest documentary reference now extant, to a junction 
 of circuits, occurs in the application for a patent signed by Professor Morse April 7, 
 
 1838. 
 
 On filing this application in the Patent Office, he had requested that it might be re- 
 tained in the secret archives, unacted upon, until he should have procured his foreign 
 patents. He left this country for Europe with that object May 16, 1838, and returned 
 to New York April 15, 1839. For a year or more afterward he took no step toward 
 procuring his patent, till he wrote the following letter to the “ Hon. H. L. Ellsworth, 
 Commissioner of Patents”: 
 
 “New York, May 2, 1840. 
 
 “Dear Sir: I have never received my patent papers from your office. I believe 
 there was something to be done on my part in relation to a drawing for one of the 
 duplicates, which I was prevented from accomplishing by the necessity of preparing 
 suddenly for my visit to Europe with the telegraph. I have nearly completed an im- 
 proved apparatus for which I intend to take out a patent, adding it to my patent 
 already executed, as an improvement. . . . 
 
 “ Your old friend and classmate, 
 
 “ Samuel F. B. Morse.” 
 
 To this the Commissioner replied as follows : 
 
 “Patent Office, May 14, 1840. 
 
 “ Sir : The specifications and drawings of your alleged improvement in the mode of 
 communicating signals by the application of electro-magnetism are herewith re- 
 turned to you, the explanatory reference in the same not being sufficient to properly 
 illustrate the invention. Some annotations pointing out the parts where these are 
 wanting are marked in pencil in the margin of the description. 
 
 “ Your favor of the 2d instant has been received ; in reply to which the ‘office has to 
 state that the delay attending the granting of your application has not been caused 
 by any want of attention on its part. Some two years since, when your patent was 
 about being issued, a request was made by you that the case might be postponed until 
 you should have received letters patent from the European governments. This request 
 was complied with, and as no communication has been received from you since in re- 
 lation to the issuing of the patent, the case has been permitted to lie over. The pat- 
 ent will be issued however immediately on the return of the papers. 
 
 “ Yours respectfully, 
 
 “H. L. Ellsworth.” 
 
 The amended specification and a duplicate set of drawings were returned to the 
 Patent Office by Professor Morse, with a letter dated New York, May 18, 1840. It was 
 then discovered that the original oath of invention required by law was defective in 
 
100 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 omitting a specific (late, tlie space for the day and the month having been left blank 
 The applicant having been informed of this by official letter dated May 26, 1840, a new 
 affidavit, properly executed, was sent to the Patent Office May 29, 1840, and the pat- 
 ent was finally issued June 20, 1840. 
 
 Whether the true date of the invention of the “relay,” by Professor Morse, be 1837, 
 or 1838, is not regarded as a matter of any importance historically, as in either case, 
 he is fully credited with its original conception. 
 
 NOTE L. (From p. 68.) 
 
 ALPHABETIC BINARY NOTATION. 
 
 It seems proper to take some notice of the growth of that beautiful invention, the 
 hi -signal alphabet. Its origin appears to be considerably earlier than that of its con- 
 gener, the binary arithmetical notation devised by Leibnitz two hundred years ago. 
 An alphabetic code of signals is indeed as old as the time of the Greek historian Poly- 
 bius (150 years before the Christian era), who describes in the tenth book of his Gen- 
 eral History a method of signaling to a distance any required dispatch by means of 
 torches, — which he says was invented by Cleoxenus and Democlitus, and perfected by 
 himself. In this scheme the Greek alphabet of 24 letters is distributed into five series 
 or tablets, each comprising five letters: (the last space being vacant.) Then torches 
 (from one to five) exposed on the left side, will indicate the group or tablet ; and sim- 
 ilar torches raised on the right side, will indicate the place of the letter on the tablet.* 
 This system may obviously be very easily resolved into a bi-signal alphabet. It ap- 
 pears that the emperor Leo YI, (of the eastern division of the empire) about the year 
 a. d. 900, in a chapter of his “Military Tactics,” on naval warfare, described a plan 
 somewhat similar to the above, t 
 
 An early English example of the bi-signal alphabet is to be found in Francis Bacon’s 
 “Advancement of Learning,” published in 1605. In this Treatise, discoursing on cryp- 
 tography, he observes : “We shall here annex a cipher of our own, that we devised at 
 Paris in our youth. . . . The invention is this : let all the letters of the alphabet be 
 
 resolved into two only, by repetition and transposition ; for a transposition of two let- 
 ters through five places or different arrangements, will denote two-and-thirty differences? 
 and consequently fewer or four-and-twenty, — the number of letters in our alphabet.” 
 (It will be remembered that at this date the letters j and u had not been differentiated 
 from i and v.) Bacon then gives an example of “ a bi-literal alphabet” consisting of 
 the permutations of “a” and “ b” through five places; and he subjoins the comment 
 that “this contrivance shows a method of expressing and signifying one’s mind to any 
 distance , by objects that are either visible or audible, provided the objects are capable 
 of two differences, as bells, speaking-trumpets, fire-work3, cannon, &c.”t 
 
 In the “Cyclopaedia” of Doctor Abraham Rees, published early in the present century 
 (1802-1819), under the word “'cipher” are presented among a variety of interesting 
 alphabetic notations, examples of one formed by the combinations of three characters, 
 and of one formed by two characters ; the latter evidently copied from Bacon. The 
 compiler sdys : “Another mode of corresponding by cipher is striking two, or three; 
 bells of various sizes.” After remarking that two symbols require a larger combina- 
 tion for each letter than three, and giving an example of each kind, the writer adds : 
 “The effect will be the same, whether the writer make use of arithmetical characters, 
 letters, dots, lines, mathematical diagrams, or any other sign which admits of two, or of 
 three differences.” Employing as an instance the figures 1 and 2, he makes use of 
 five recurrences for each letter, as in the example given by Bacon, and he follows a 
 
 ’'Polybius’s History ; lib. x. cap. 45. Greek and Latin edition of A. F. Didot, Paris, 
 8vo. 1852. pp. 474, 475. 
 
 t“ The emperor Leo YI, in his chapter on naval tactics (chap, xix), describes almost ex- 
 actly Myer’s army code, concluding with the remark, ‘ as the ancients did.’ ” ( Johnson’s 
 Universal CyclojKedia: edited by Dr. Barnard: aft. “Naval Signals,” vol. iii. p. 734.) 
 
 t On the Dignity and Advancement of Learning, book vi, chap. i. — Bolin’s edition, 1858, 
 pp. 222, 223. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 101 
 
 similar order of permutations. The two symbols — the single dot or period (.), and the 
 double dot or colon (:), — are also employed for the same purpose. * 
 
 In the following table are displayed several examples of bi-signal alphabets, chrono- 
 logically arranged, t In the first column, the two symbols “a” and “b,” and in the 
 second column the two symbols “ 1” and “2,” may stand for dots, lines, colors, bells, 
 or any other distinctions of sight or sound, as indicated by Bacon and by Rees. In 
 the third column is exhibited the notation of an acoustic alphabet devised by Mr. James 
 Swaim, of Philadelphia, and published in 1829, in a pamphlet entitled “ The Mural 
 Diagraph, or the Art of Conversing though a Wall.” In this scheme (sometimes 
 designated the ^ prison alphabet), the symbol “t” signifies an audible tap or knock, 
 and the “s” an audible scratch. + In the next three columns, the two symbols “r’’ 
 and “1” represent a movement of a galvanometer needle to the right and to the left. 
 In the last three columns, the symbols “s” and “1” represent a short mark or dot, 
 and a long mark or dash. 
 
 
 I. ! 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Bacon. 
 
 Rees. 
 
 Swaim. 
 
 Schilling. 
 
 Gauss & 
 W eber. 
 
 Steinheil. 
 
 Original 
 
 Morse. 
 
 Later 
 
 Morse. 
 
 European 
 
 Morse. 
 
 
 1605. 
 
 1809. 
 
 1829. 
 
 — 
 
 1833. 
 
 1836. 
 
 1838. 
 
 1844. 
 
 1851. 
 
 A 
 
 aaaaa 
 
 11 111 
 
 t 
 
 rl 
 
 r 
 
 lrl 
 
 sss 
 
 si 
 
 si 
 
 B 
 
 aaaab 
 
 11112 
 
 tt 
 
 rrr 
 
 11 
 
 lrrl 
 
 ss ss 
 
 Isss 
 
 lsss 
 
 C 
 
 aaaba 
 
 11121 
 
 ttt 
 
 rll 
 
 rrr 
 
 llr 
 
 s ss 
 
 ss s 
 
 lsls 
 
 D 
 
 aaabb 
 
 11122 
 
 tttt 
 
 rrl 
 
 rrl 
 
 rl 
 
 sss s 
 
 lss 
 
 lss 
 
 E 
 
 aabaa 
 
 11211 
 
 s 
 
 r 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 s 
 
 s 
 
 8 
 
 P 
 
 aabab 
 
 11212 
 
 ss 
 
 rrrr 
 
 rlr 
 
 lrr 
 
 s ssS 
 
 sis 
 
 ssls 
 
 G 
 
 aabba 
 
 11221 
 
 sss 
 
 1111 
 
 lrr 
 
 rrl 
 
 ss s 
 
 11s 
 
 11s 
 
 H 
 
 aabbb 
 
 11222 
 
 SSSS j 
 
 rill 
 
 111 
 
 rrrr 
 
 i SSSS 
 
 SSSS 
 
 SSSS 
 
 I 
 
 abaaa 
 
 12111 
 
 ts 
 
 IT 
 
 rr 
 
 r 
 
 si 
 
 ss 
 
 ss 
 
 J 
 
 — 
 
 12112 
 
 t tts 
 
 rrll 
 
 1 
 
 r 
 
 ss s 
 
 lsls 
 
 sill 
 
 K 
 
 abaab 
 
 12122 
 
 1 1 
 
 rrrl 
 
 rrr 
 
 llr 
 
 lsl 
 
 lsl 
 
 lsl 
 
 L 
 
 ababa 
 
 12211 
 
 ttt 
 
 lrrr 
 
 llr 
 
 rll 
 
 V 
 
 r 
 
 slss 
 
 M 
 
 ah abb 
 
 12212 
 
 t ttt 
 
 lrl 
 
 lrl 
 
 rrr 
 
 lss 
 
 11 
 
 11 
 
 N : 
 
 abbaa 
 
 12221 
 
 t tttt 
 
 lr 
 
 rll 
 
 rr 
 
 Is 
 
 Is 
 
 Is 
 
 0 
 
 abbab 
 
 12222 
 
 t 8 
 
 rlr 
 
 rl 
 
 111 
 
 ss 
 
 s s- 
 
 111 
 
 p 
 
 abbba 
 
 21111 
 
 t SS ' i 
 
 Hit 
 
 rrrr 
 
 rllr 
 
 sssss 
 
 sssss 
 
 slls 
 
 Q 
 
 abbbb 
 
 21112 
 
 t SSS ' 
 
 lllr 
 
 
 
 ssls 
 
 • ssls 
 
 llsl 
 
 R 
 
 baaaa 
 
 21121 
 
 t SSSS 
 
 lrr 
 
 rrrl 
 
 11 
 
 8 S 
 
 s ss 
 
 sis 
 
 s 
 
 baaab 
 
 21122 
 
 t ts 
 
 11 
 
 rrlr 
 
 llrr 
 
 sis 
 
 sss 
 
 sss 
 
 T 
 
 baaba 
 
 21211 
 
 tt tts 
 
 1 
 
 rlrr 
 
 lr 
 
 11s 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 IJ 
 
 — 
 
 21212 
 
 tt t 
 
 llr 
 
 lr 
 
 rlr 
 
 sll 
 
 ' ssl 
 
 ssl 
 
 V 
 
 baabb 
 
 21221 
 
 tt tt 1 
 
 111 
 
 rlr 
 
 rlr 
 
 1 
 
 sssl 
 
 sssl 
 
 w 
 
 babaa 
 
 12121 
 
 tt ttt 
 
 rlrl 
 
 lrrr 
 
 rlrl 
 
 ssl 
 
 sll 
 
 sll 
 
 X 
 
 babab 
 
 22212 
 
 tt tttt 
 
 Mr 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 slss 
 
 lssl 
 
 Y 
 
 babba 
 
 22221 
 
 tt s 
 
 rllr , 
 
 
 
 si 
 
 ss ss 
 
 lsll 
 
 z 
 
 babbb 
 
 22122 
 
 tt ss 
 
 rlrr 
 
 rrll 
 
 rrll 
 
 sis 
 
 sss s 
 
 llss 
 
 * Rees’ Cyclopaedia, vol. 
 
 viii, art. 
 
 , “ Ciplie 
 
 r.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 tOf two early alphabets for the electric telegraph,— that of Lomond in 178/, and that 
 of Dyar in 1828, no records appear to exist. A plan was suggested by Henry at Al- 
 bany in 1831 or 1832, for indicating letters on a bell by the number of their position in 
 the alphabet: “a”byl, “b” by 2, “c”by 3, &c. 'Thus the words “come back” 
 would be represented by the following taps: 3-15-13-5—2-1-3-11 ; the word “electro- 
 magnet,” by 5-12-5-3-20-18-15 — 13-1-7-14-5-20. The cipher or zero occurring at the 
 10th letter “j,” and at the 20th letter “t” would be indicated by a rapid rattle of the 
 bell. It does not appear however that this alphabet was actually employed, unless 
 perhaps experimentally. 
 
 XThe Mural Diagraph , etc. “ Through the wall they are content | To whisper, at the 
 which Let no man wonder.” Midsummer Night’s Dream, v. i. Bv James Swaim. 16- 
 mo. 24 pages. Philadelphia. Printed by Clark & Raser. 1829. pp. 13, 14. The 
 signs were used numerically ; and beyond “26” (the letters of the alphabet) were ap- 
 plied to a numbered vocabulary. 
 
102 
 
 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 4 
 
 The first column in the above tabular view, represents tbe scheme proposed by Bacon f 
 and designated by him “A Bi-literal Alphabet;’ 7 a scheme — as he points out, “prac- 
 ticable in all things that are capable of two differences.” The advantage of represent- 
 ing every letter by five tokens, is that it dispenses with the necessity of spacing the 
 letters from each other. 
 
 The second column represents an alphabet shown and described in Rees’ “Cyclopaj- 
 dia” as already referred to. In this alphabet the first nine letters follow exactly the 
 notation of Bacon. After the interpolated letter j, ( which takes the symbol for k, ) the 
 remainder of the alphabet from k to v inclusive, follows regularly the notation of 
 Bacon — shifted two letters downward. The only symbols differing from Bacon’s, are 
 those for x, y, and z. 
 
 The third column gives the alphabet of Swaim above mentioned. The author has 
 not been successful in arranging for his letters the simplest combinations of taps and 
 scratches which might have been selected ; having given to n, r, t, and w, five sig- 
 nals, and to x, six ; while four of his signs are sufficient to represent 30 different char- 
 acters. Moreover by adopting a numeral system of designation, he has been driven 
 to the awkward and entirely unnecessary expedient of introducing spaces into letters 
 in seventeen cases, or in two-thirds of the alphabet ; that is in all letters following the 
 ninth letter — i. 
 
 The fourth column gives the alphabet of Schilling, as represented in Vail’s “Electro- 
 Magnetic Telegraph: ” (page 156.) The date of this is uncertain ; involving as it does 
 the question when Schilling first employed a single circuit and a single galvanometer 
 in his telegraphic arrangement. Whether he or Gauss and Weber first devised this 
 very important simplification is equally undetermined ; though the presumption is in 
 favor of Schilling having been the first to introduce the bi-signal alphabet into teleg- 
 raphy. With a judicious distribution of the simplest signs to the most frequent let- 
 ters, the average number of elementary signals need not exceed two and a half for 
 every letter used, (or just one-half the number required by Bacon’s alphabet,) in any 
 lengthy communication. Steinheil, who was very imperfectly acquainted with Schil- 
 ling’s labors, appears to regard his system as imitated from that ot Gauss and Weber. * 
 
 The fifth column gives the alphabet of Gauss and Weber, as represented in Turnbull’s 
 “Electro-Magnetic Telegraph.” t In this alphabet c and k have the same symbol; 
 as have also f and v. 
 
 The sixth column gives the alphabet of Steinheil as represented in Dub’s Anwendung 
 des Elektromagnetismus : Berlin, 1863: (2d ed. 1873, sec. v, page 343:) in Vail’s Treatise; 
 (page 182:) and in Turnbull’s Treatise ; (1853, page 97.) In this alphabet c and k 
 have the same character ; i and j have the same ; and u and v have the same ; the 
 letters Q, x, and y, being dispensed with. Steinheil remarks of its arrangement, 
 “ The alphabet I have chosen represents the letters that occur the oftenest in German, 
 by the simplest signs”; a plan also adopted by Schilling and by Gauss. 
 
 The seventh column gives the original alphabet of Morse, as devised by him (or by his 
 assistant — Mr. Vail) in 1838; and for the first time described in his application for a 
 patent dated April 7, 1838. This is accordingly the alphabet presented in Morse’s first 
 patent, dated June 20, 1840. In this, he has given the same symbol to g and j ; the same 
 to i and y ; and the same to s and z. It must be borne in mind that down to the year 
 1838, Professor Morse had conceived only the naval system of signals by means of 
 numbered words, and the method of recording such numbers by the alternating or 
 continuous zig-zag mark, equivalent to the right and left deflections of Steinheil’s 
 register and that not till some time in January of that year (1838), did he make the 
 great advance of substituting the up and down movement of the armature recorder, 
 for its transverse motion. He then for the first time made his telegraphic communi- 
 
 * Sturgeon’s Annals of Electricity , etc. vol. iii, pp. 448, 450. 
 
 t Second edition, 1853, p. 60. 
 
 f New York Journal of Commerce, of September 7, 1837, and of January 29, 1838. 
 
HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 103 
 
 cations by means of an alphabet ; and improving on his predecessors, devised this 
 alphabet in its simplest form, of a rectilinear succession of dots and lines. 
 
 A few years later, the modification given in the eighth column was adopted ;* being 
 the code now in use in this country. This second alphabet of Morse retains but seven 
 of the letters in his original alphabet; namely, e, h, k, l, n, p, and q. The remain- 
 ing symbols are changed in their application. Both of these alphabets present the 
 anomaly of employing for the letter l the unique symbol, a dash of double length : a 
 [ symbol whose combinations with dots might have been much more appropriately re- 
 served for designating numerals. And they both also present the very awkward ar- 
 ! rangement of introducing in five or six cases, a space in the middle of a letter. This 
 occurred with b, c, d, f, g or j, and r, in the first alphabet, and remains with c, o, 
 r, y, and z in the later alphabet. Whence it becomes difficult to distinguish be- 
 tween c and ie, between o and ee, between r and ei, between y and n, and between z 
 and se; and if on the other hand the intra-literal space be made too brief, c or R 
 may easily be mistaken for s, O for i, and Y or z for H. 
 
 The ninth and last column gives the alphabet adopted Joy the Vienna convention in 
 October, 1851, for European languages; as represented in Prescott’s larger treatise on 
 Electricity and the Electric Telegraph,. 1877 : (page 480.) This alphabet avoids the obvi- 
 ous blunder in Morse’s notation, and presents a homogeneous system. In this code 
 eleven of the Morse letters are changed : c, f, l, and r, having been taken from 
 Gerke’s alphabet, O, and p, from Steinheil’s, and J, Q, x, Y, and z, from other sources. 
 Of the original “Morse alphabet” only four letters are retained, viz, e, h, k, and n. 
 This European or “international” alphabet is however in a few of its symbols, bet- 
 ter adapted to the German than to the English language. Accordingly in the Atlantic 
 cable alphabet, the two letters m (11), and o (111), have been transposed ; as in Eng- 
 lish the letter o occurs nearly three times as frequently as the letter m. 
 
 We thus perceive by what apparently small steps so simple a contrivance as an al- 
 phabetic notation, (scarcely demanding the exercise of invention,) has been succes- 
 sively modified and improved. But although the “Vienna” alphabet is now univer- 
 sally employed elsewhere, American operators’have not yet had the intelligent courage, 
 to incur the temporary additional labor and inconvenience of change, for the perma- 
 nent advantage of a more perfect system, t 
 
 * Represented in Vail’s Treatise, 1845, p. 27 ; in Turnbull’s Treatise, 1853, p. 73 ; in 
 G. B. Prescott’s Hist, of Electric Telegraph, 1860, p. 89; and in F. L. Pope’s Modern Prac- 
 tice of the Electric Telegraph , 4th ed. 1871, p. 101. 
 
 t “It has been proposed to introduce the European alphabet in this country also ; 
 but although the advantages of such a reform would doubtless be numerous, yet it 
 may perhaps be better to suffer some inconvenience from an acknowledged imperfec- 
 tion, than to attempt to remedy it by introducing a change that would for a time 
 cause serious annoyance to the thousands of skillful operators now in the service.” 
 .(Prescott’s Electricity and the Electric Telegraph, 1877, chap, xxx, p. 431.) 
 
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