1835--1837
First exhibitions of the Telegraph.--Testimony of Robert G. Rankin and
Rev. Henry B. Tappan.--Cooke and Wheatstone.--Joseph Henry, Leonard D.
Gale, and Alfred Vail.--Professor Gale's testimony.--Professor Henry's
discoveries.--Regrettable controversy of later years.--Professor Charles
T. Jackson's claims.--Alfred Vail.--Contract of September 23, 1837.--Work
at Morristown. New Jersey.--The "Morse Alphabet."--Reading by sound.--
first and second forms of alphabet.
In after years the question of the time when the telegraph was first
exhibited to others was a disputed one; it will, therefore, be well to
give the testimony of a few men of undoubted integrity who personally
witnessed the first experiments.
Robert G. Rankin, Esq., gave his reminiscences to Mr. Prime, from which I
shall select the following passages:--
"Professor Morse was one of the purest and noblest men of any age. I
believe I was among the earliest, outside of his family circle, to whom
he communicated his design to encircle the globe with wire....
"Some time in the fall of 1835 I was passing along the easterly walk of
Washington Parade-Ground, leading from Waverly Place to Fourth Street,
when I heard my name called. On turning round I saw, over the
picketfence, an outstretched arm from a person standing in the middle or
main entrance door of the unfinished University building of New York, and
immediately recognized the professor, who beckoned me toward him. On
meeting and exchanging salutations,--and you know how genial his were,--
he took me by the arm and said:
"'I wish you to go up in my sanctum and examine a piece of mechanism,
which, if you may not believe in, _you_, at least, will not laugh at, as
I fear some others will. I want you to give me your frank opinion as a
friend, for I know your interest in and love of the applied sciences.'"
Here follow a description of what he saw and Morse's explanation, and,
then he continues:--
"A long silence on the part of each ensued, which was at length broken by
my exclamation: 'Well, professor, you have a pretty play!--theoretically
true but practically useful only as a mantel ornament, or for a mistress
in the parlor to direct the maid in the cellar! But, professor, _cui
bono?_ In imagination one can make a new earth and improve all the land
communications of our old one, but my unfortunate practicality stands in
the way of my comprehension as yet.'
"We then had a long conversation on the subject of magnetism and its
modifications, and if I do not recollect the very words which clothed his
thoughts, they were substantially as follows.
"He had been long impressed with the belief that God had created the
great forces of nature, not only as manifestations of his own infinite
power, but as expressions of good-will to man, to do him good, and that
every one of God's great forces could yet be utilized for man's welfare;
that modern science was constantly evolving from the hitherto hidden
secrets of nature some new development promotive of human welfare; and
that, at no distant day, magnetism would do more for the advancement of
human sociology than any of the material forces yet known; that he would
scarcely dare to compare spiritual with material forces, yet that,
analogically, magnetism would do in the advancement of human welfare what
the Spirit of God would do in the moral renovation of man's nature; that
it would educate and enlarge the forces of the world.... He said he had
felt as if he was doing a great work for God's glory as well as for man's
welfare; that such had been his long cherished thought. His whole soul
and heart appeared filled with a glow of love and good-will, and his
sensitive and impassioned nature seemed almost to transform him in my
eyes into a prophet."
It required, indeed, the inspirational vision of a prophet to foresee, in
those narrow, skeptical days, the tremendous part which electricity was
to play in the civilization of a future age, and I wish again to lay
stress on the fact that it was the telegraph which first harnessed this
mysterious force, and opened the eyes of the world to the availability of
a power which had lain dormant through all the ages, but which was now,
for the first time, to be brought under the control of man, and which was
destined to rival, and eventually to displace, in many ways, its elder
brother steam. Was not Morse's ambition to confer a lasting good on his
fellowmen more fully realized than even he himself at that time
comprehended?
The Reverend Henry B. Tappan, who in 1835 was a colleague of Morse's in
the New York University and afterwards President of the University of
Michigan, gave his testimony in reply to a request from Morse, and, among
other things, he said:--
"In 1835 you had advanced so far that you were prepared to give, on a
small scale, a practical demonstration of the possibility of transmitting
and recording words through distance by means of an electro-magnetic
arrangement. I was one of the limited circle whom you invited to witness
the first experiments. In a long room of the University you had wires
extended from end to end, where the magnetic apparatus was arranged.
"It is not necessary for me to describe particulars which have now become
familiar to every one. The fact which I recall with the liveliest
interest, and which I mentioned in conversation at Mr. Bancroft's as one
of the choicest recollections of my life, was that of the first
transmission and recording of a telegraphic dispatch.
"I suppose, of course, that you had already made these experiments before
the company arrived whom you had invited. But I claim to have witnessed
_the first transmission and recording of words_ by lightning ever made
public.... The arrangement which you exhibited on the above mentioned
occasion, as well as the mode of receiving the dispatches, were
substantially the same as those you now employ. I feel certain that you
had then already grasped the whole invention, however you may have since
perfected the details."
Others bore testimony in similar words, so that we may regard it as
proved that, both in 1835 and 1836, demonstrations were made which,
uncouth though they were, compared to present-day perfection, proved that
the electric telegraph was about to emerge from the realms of fruitless
experiment. Among these witnesses were Daniel Huntington, Hon. Hamilton
Fish, and Commodore Shubrick; and several of these gentlemen asserted
that, at that early period, Morse confidently predicted that Europe and
America would eventually be united by an electric wire.
The letters written by Morse during these critical years have become
hopelessly dispersed, and but few have come into my possession. His
brothers were both in New York, so that there was no necessity of writing
to them, and the letters written to others cannot, at this late day, be
traced. As he also, unfortunately, did not keep a journal, I must depend
on the testimony of others, and on his own recollections in later years
for a chronicle of his struggles. The pencil copy of a letter written to
a friend in Albany, on August 27, 1837, has, however, survived, and the
following sentences will, I think, be found interesting:--
"Thanks to you, my dear C----, for the concern you express in regard to
my health. It has been perfectly good and is now, with the exception of a
little anxiety in relation to the telegraph and to my great pictorial
undertaking, which wears the furrows of my face a little deeper. My
Telegraph, in all its essential points, is tested to my own satisfaction
and that of the scientific gentlemen who have seen it; but the machinery
(all which, from its peculiar character, I have been compelled to make
myself) is imperfect, and before it can be perfected I have reason to
fear that other nations will take the hint and rob me both of the credit
and the profit. There are indications of this in the foreign journals
lately received. I have a defender in the 'Journal of Commerce' (which I
send you that you may know what is the progress of the matter), and
doubtless other journals of our country will not allow foreign nations to
take the credit of an invention of such vast importance as they assign to
it, when they learn that it certainly belongs to America.
"There is not a thought in any one of the foreign journals relative to
the Telegraph which I had not expressed nearly five years ago, on my
passage from France, to scientific friends; and when it is considered how
quick a hint flies from mind to mind and is soon past all tracing back to
the original suggester of the hint, it is certainly by no means
improbable that the excitement on the subject in England has its origin
from my giving the details of the plan of my Telegraph to some of the
Englishmen or other fellow-passengers on board the ship, or to some of
the many I have since made acquainted with it during the five years
past."
In this he was mistaken, for the English telegraph of Cooke and
Wheatstone was quite different in principle, using the deflection, by a
current of electricity, of a delicately adjusted needle to point to the
letters of the alphabet. While this was in use in England for a number of
years, it was gradually superseded by the Morse telegraph which proved
its decided superiority. It is also worthy of note that in this letter,
and in all future letters and articles, he, with pardonable pride, uses a
capital T in speaking of his Telegraph.
One of the most difficult of the problems which confront the historian
who sincerely wishes to deal dispassionately with his subject is justly
to apportion the credit which must be given to different workers in the
same field of endeavor, and especially in that of invention; for every
invention is but an improvement on something which has gone before. The
sail-boat was an advance on the rude dugout propelled by paddles. The
first clumsy steamboat seemed a marvel to those who had known no other
propulsive power than that of the wind or the oar. The horse-drawn
vehicle succeeded the litter and the palanquin, to be in turn followed by
the locomotive; and so the telegraph, as a means of rapidly communicating
intelligence between distant points, was the logical successor of the
signal fire and the semaphore.
In all of these improvements by man upon what man had before
accomplished, the pioneer was not only dependent upon what his
predecessors had achieved, but, in almost every case, was compelled to
call to his assistance other workers to whom could be confided some of
the minutiæ which were essential to the successful launching of the new
enterprise.
I have shown conclusively that the idea of transmitting intelligence by
electricity was original with Morse in that he was unaware, until some
years after his first conception, that anyone else had ever thought of
it. I have also shown that he, unaided by others, invented and made with
his own hands a machine, rude though it may have been, which actually did
transmit and record intelligence by means of the electric current, and in
a manner entirely different from the method employed by others. But he
had now come to a point where knowledge of what others had accomplished
along the same line would greatly facilitate his labors, and when the
assistance of one more skilled in mechanical construction was a great
desideratum, and both of these essentials were at hand. It is quite
possible that he might have succeeded in working out the problem
absolutely unaided, just as a man might become a great painter without
instruction, without a knowledge of the accumulated wisdom of those who
preceded him, and without the assistance of the color-maker and the
manufacturer of brushes and canvas. But the artist is none the less a
genius because he listens to the counsels of his master, profits by the
experience of others, and purchases his supplies instead of grinding his
own colors and laboriously manufacturing his own canvas and brushes.
The three men to whom Morse was most indebted for material assistance in
his labors at this critical period were Professor Joseph Henry, Professor
Leonard D. Gale, and Alfred Vail, and it is my earnest desire to do full
justice to all of them. Unfortunately after the telegraph had become an
assured success, and even down to the present day, the claims of Morse
have been bitterly assailed, both by well-meaning persons and by the
unscrupulous who sought to break down his patent rights; and the names of
these three men were freely used in the effort to prove that to one or
all of them more credit was due than to Morse.
Now, after the lapse of nearly three quarters of a century, the verdict
has been given in favor of Morse, his name alone is accepted as that of
the Inventor of the Telegraph, and in this work it is my aim to prove
that the judgment of posterity has not erred, but also to give full
credit to those who aided him when he was most in need of assistance. My
task in some instances will be a delicate one; I shall have to prick some
bubbles, for the friends of some of these men have claimed too much for
them, and, on that account, have been bitter in their accusations against
Morse. I shall also have to acknowledge some errors of judgment on the
part of Morse, for the malice of others fomented a dispute between him
and one of these three men, which caused a permanent estrangement and was
greatly to be regretted.
The first of the three to enter into the history of the telegraph was
Leonard D. Gale, who, in 1836, was a professor in the University of the
City of New York, and he has given his recollections of those early days.
Avoiding a repetition of facts already recorded I shall quote some
sentences from Professor Gale's statement. After describing the first
instrument, which he saw in January of 1836, he continues:--
"During the years 1836 and beginning of 1837 the studies of Professor
Morse on his telegraph I found much interrupted by his attention to his
professional duties. I understood that want of pecuniary means prevented
him from procuring to be made such mechanical improvements, and such
substantial workmanship, as would make the operation of his invention
more exact.
"In the months of March and April, 1837, the announcement of an
extraordinary telegraph on the visual plan (as it afterwards proved to
be), the invention of two French gentlemen of the names of Gonon and
Servell, was going the rounds of the papers. The thought occurred to me,
as well as to Professor Morse and some others of his friends, that the
invention of his electro-magnetic telegraph had somehow become known, and
was the origin of the new telegraph thus conspicuously announced. This
announcement at once aroused Professor Morse to renewed exertions to
bring the new invention creditably before the public, and to consent to a
public announcement of the existence of his invention. From April to
September, 1837, Professor Morse and myself were engaged together in the
work of preparing magnets, winding wire, constructing batteries, etc., in
the University for an experiment on a larger, but still very limited
scale, in the little leisure that each had to spare, and being at the
same time much cramped for funds....
"The latter part of August, 1887, the operation of the instruments was
shown to numerous visitors at the University....
"On Saturday, the 2d of September, 1837, Professor Daubeny, of the
English Oxford University, 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 University, where it had then
been put up with a circuit of seventeen hundred feet of copper wire
stretched back and forth in that long room. Professor Daubeny, Professor
Torrey, and Mr. Alfred Vail were present among others. This exhibition of
the telegraph, although of very rude and imperfectly constructed
machinery, demonstrated to all present the practicability of the
invention, and it resulted in enlisting the means, the skill, and the
zeal of Mr. Alfred Vail, who, early the next week, called at the rooms
and had a more perfect explanation from Professor Morse of the character
of the invention."
It was Professor Gale who first called Morse's attention to the
discoveries of Professor Joseph Henry, especially to that of the
intensity magnet, and he thus describes the interesting event:--
"Morse's machine was complete 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 distance. 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, etc., but not of
projecting electricity to a great distance, and that, to accomplish this,
a battery of many cups is necessary. It was, therefore, evident to me
that the one large cup-battery 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 shown 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 wire around the poles of the magnet and sent a
message through two hundred feet of conductors, then through one thousand
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."
This was a most important step in hastening the reduction of the
invention to a practical, workable basis and I wish here to bear
testimony to the great services of Professor Henry in making this
possible. His valuable discoveries were freely given to the world with no
attempt on his part to patent them, which is, perhaps, to be regretted,
but much more is it to be deplored that, in, the litigation which ensued
a few years later, Morse and Henry were drawn into a controversy,
fostered and fomented by others for their own pecuniary benefit, which
involved the honor and veracity of both of these distinguished men. Both
were men of the greatest sensitiveness, proud and jealous of their own
integrity, and the breach once made was never healed. Of the rights and
wrongs of this controversy I may have occasion later on to treat more in
detail, although I should much prefer to dismiss it with the
acknowledgment that there was much to deplore in what was said and
written by Morse, although he sincerely believed himself to be in the
right, and much to regret in some of the statements and actions of Henry.
At this late day, when the mists which enveloped the questions have
rolled away, it seems but simple justice to admit that the wonderful
discoveries of Henry were essential to the successful working over long
distances of Morse's discoveries and inventions; just as the discoveries
and inventions of earlier and contemporary scientists were essential to
Henry's improvements. But it is also just to place emphasis on the fact
that Henry's experiments were purely scientific. He never attempted to
put them in concrete form for the use of mankind in general; they led up
to the telegraph; they were not a practical telegraph in themselves. It
was Morse who added the final link in the long chain, and, by combining
the discoveries of others with those which he had himself made, gave to
the world this wonderful new agent.
A recent writer in the "Scientific American" gave utterance to the
following sentiment, which, it seems to me, most aptly describes this
difference: "We need physical discoveries and revere those who seek truth
for its own sake. But mankind with keen instinct saves its warmest
acclaim for those who also make discoveries of some avail in adding to
the length of life, its joys, its possibilities, its conveniences."
We must also remember that, while the baby telegraph had, in 1837, been
recognized as a promising infant by a very few scientists and personal
friends of the inventor, it was still regarded with suspicion, if not
with scorn, by the general public and even by many men of scholarly
attainments, and a long and heart-breaking struggle for existence was
ahead of it before it should reach maturity and develop into the lusty
giant of the present day. Here again Morse proved that he was the one man
of his generation most eminently fitted to fight for the child of his
brain, to endure and to persevere until the victor's crown was grasped.
It is always idle to speculate on what might have happened if certain
events had not taken place; if certain men had not met certain other men.
A telegraph would undoubtedly have been invented if Morse had never been
born; or he might have perfected his invention without the aid and advice
of others, or with the assistance of different men from those who
appeared at the psychological moment. But we are dealing with facts and
not with suppositions, and the facts are that through Professor Gale he
was made acquainted with the discoveries of Joseph Henry, which had been
published to the world several years before, and could have been used by
others if they had had the wit or genius to grasp their significance and
hit upon the right means to make them of practical utility.
Morse was ever ready cheerfully to acknowledge the assistance which had
been given to him by others, but, at the same time, he always took the
firm stand that this did not give them a claim to an equal share with
himself in the honor of the invention. In a long letter to Professor
Charles T. Jackson, written on September 18, 1837, he vigorously but
courteously repudiates the claim of the latter to have been a co-inventor
on board the Sully, and he proves his point, for Jackson not only knew
nothing of the plan adopted by Morse, and carried by him to a successful
issue, but had never suggested anything of a practical nature. At the
same time Morse freely acknowledges that the conversation between them on
the ship suggested to him the train of thought which culminated in the
invention, for he adds:--
"You say, 'I trust you will take care that the proper share of credit
shall be given to me when you make public your doings.' This I always
have done and with pleasure. I have always given you credit for great
genius and acquirements, and have always said, in giving any account of
my Telegraph, that it was during a scientific conversation with you on
board the ship that I first conceived the thought of an electric
Telegraph. Is there really any more that you will claim or that I could
in truth and justice give?
"I have acknowledgments of a similar kind to make to Professor Silliman
and to Professor Gale; to the former of whom I am under precisely similar
obligations with yourself for several useful hints; 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 considered as a mutual inventor
on the score of aid by hints, it is Professor Gale, but he prefers no
claim of the kind."
And he never did prefer such a claim (although it was made for him by
others), but remained always loyal to Morse. Jackson, on the other hand,
insisted on pressing his demand, although it was an absurd one, and he
was a thorn in the flesh to Morse for many years. It will not be
necessary to go into the matter in detail, as Jackson was, through his
wild claims to other inventions and discoveries, thoroughly discredited,
and his views have now no weight in the scientific world.
The third person who came to the assistance of Morse at this critical
period was Alfred Vail, son of Judge Stephen Vail, of Morristown, New
Jersey. In 1837 he was a young man of thirty and had graduated from the
University of the City of New York in 1836. He was present at the
exhibition of Morse's invention on the 2d of September, 1837, and he at
once grasped its great possibilities. After becoming satisfied that
Morse's device of the relay would permit of operation over great
distances, he expressed a desire to become associated with the inventor
in the perfecting and exploitation of the invention. His father was the
proprietor of the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, and young Vail had
had some experience in the manufacture of mechanical appliances in the
factory, although he had taken the theological course at the University
with the intention of entering the Presbyterian ministry. He had
abandoned the idea of becoming a clergyman, however, on account of
ill-health, and was, for a time, uncertain as to his future career, when
the interest aroused by the sight of Morse's machine settled the matter,
and, after consulting with his father and brother, he entered into an
agreement with Morse on the 23d day of September, 1837.
In the contract drawn up between them Vail bound himself to construct, at
his own expense, a complete set of instruments; to defray the costs of
securing patents in this country and abroad; and to devote his time to
both these purposes. It was also agreed that each should at once
communicate to the other any improvement or new invention bearing on the
simplification or perfecting of the telegraph, and that such improvements
or inventions should be held to be the property of each in the proportion
in which they were to share in any pecuniary benefits which might accrue.
As the only way in which Morse could, at that time, pay Vail for his
services and for money advanced, he gave him a one-fourth interest in the
invention in this country, and one half in what might be obtained from
Europe. This was, in the following March, changed to three sixteenths in
the United States and one fourth in Europe.
Morse had now secured two essentials most necessary to the rapid
perfection of his invention, the means to purchase materials and an
assistant more skilled than he in mechanical construction, and who was
imbued with faith in the ultimate success of the enterprise. Now began
the serious work of putting the invention into such a form that it could
demonstrate to the skeptical its capability of performing what was then
considered a miracle. It is hard for us at the present time, when new
marvels of science and invention are of everyday occurrence, to realize
the hidebound incredulousness which prevailed during the first half of
the nineteenth century. Men tapped their foreheads and shook their heads
in speaking of Morse and his visionary schemes, and deeply regretted that
here was the case of a brilliant man and excellent artist evidently gone
wrong. But he was not to be turned from his great purpose by the jeers of
the ignorant and the anxious solicitations of his friends, and he was
greatly heartened by the encouragement of such men as Gale and Vail. They
all three worked over the problems yet to be solved, Morse going
backwards and forwards between New York and Morristown. That both Gale
and Vail suggested improvements which were adopted by Morse, can be taken
for granted, but, as I have said before, to modify or elaborate something
originated by another is a comparatively easy matter, and the basic idea,
first conceived by Morse on the Sully, was retained throughout.
All the details of these experiments have not been recorded, but I
believe that at first an attempt was made to put into a more finished
form the principle of the machine made by Morse, with its swinging
pendulum tracing a waving line, but this was soon abandoned in favor of
an instrument using the up-and-down motion of a lever, as drawn in the
1832 sketch-book. In other words, it was a return to first principles as
thought out by Morse, and not, as some would have us believe, something
entirely new suggested and invented independently by Vail.
It was rather unfortunate and curious, in view of Morse's love of
simplicity, that he at first insisted on using the dots and dashes to
indicate numbers only, the numbers to correspond to words in a specially
prepared dictionary. His arguments in favor of this plan were specious,
but the event has proved that his reasoning was faulty. His first idea
was that the telegraph should belong to the Government; that intelligence
sent should be secret by means of a kind of cipher; that it would take
less time to send a number than each letter of each word, especially in
the case of the longer words; and, finally, that although the labor in
preparing a dictionary of all the most important words in the language
and giving to each its number would be great, once done it would be done
for all time.
I say that this was unfortunate because the fact that the telegraphic
alphabet of dots and dashes was not used until after his association with
Vail has lent strength to the claims on the part of Vail's family and
friends that he was the inventor of it and not Morse. This claim has been
so insistently, and even bitterly, made, especially after Morse's death,
that it gained wide credence and has even been incorporated in some
encyclopedias and histories. Fortunately it can be easily disproved, and
I am desirous of finally settling this vexed question because I consider
the conception of this simplest of all conventional alphabets one of the
grandest of Morse's inventions, and one which has conferred great good
upon mankind. It is used to convey intelligence not only by electricity,
but in many other ways. Its cabalistic characters can be read by the eye,
the ear, and the touch.
Just as the names of Ampère, Volta, and Watt have been used to designate
certain properties or things discovered by them, so the name of Morse is
immortalized in the alphabet invented by him. The telegraph operators all
over the world send "Morse" when they tick off the dots and dashes of the
alphabet, and happily I can prove that this is not an honor filched from
another.
It is a matter of record that Vail himself never claimed in any of his
letters or diaries (and these are voluminous) that he had anything to do
with the devising of this conventional alphabet, even with the
modification of the first form. On the other hand, in several letters to
Morse he refers to it as being Morse's. For instance, in a letter of
April 20, 1848, he uses the words "your system of marking, _lines_ and
_dots_, which you have patented." All the evidence brought forward by the
advocates of Vail is purely hearsay; he is said to have said that he
invented the alphabet.
Morse, however, always, in every one of his many written references to
the matter, speaks of it as "my conventional alphabet." In an article
which I contributed to the "Century Magazine" of March, 1912, I treated
this question at length and proved by documentary evidence that Morse
alone devised the dot-and-dash alphabet. It will not be necessary for me
to repeat all this evidence here; I shall simply give enough to prove
conclusively that the Morse Alphabet has not been misnamed.
The following is a fugitive note which was reproduced photographically in
the "Century" article:--
"Mr. Vail, in his work on the Telegraph, at p. 32, intimates that the
saw-teeth type for letters, as he has described them in the diagram (9),
were devised by me as early as the year 1832. Two of the elements of
these letters, indeed, were then devised, the dot and space, and used in
constructing the type for numerals, but, so far as my recollection now
serves me, it was not until I experimented with the first instrument in
1835 that I added the -- dash, which supplied me with the three elements
for combinations for letters. It was on noticing the fact that, when the
circuit was closed a longer time than was necessary to make a dot, there
was produced a line or dash, that, if I rightly remember, the broken
parts of a continuous line as the means of imprinting at a distance were
suggested to me; since the inequalities of long and short lines,
separated by long and short spaces, gave me all the variations or
combinations of long and short lines necessary to form the alphabet. The
date of the code complete must, therefore, be put at 1835, and not 1832,
although at the date of 1832 the principle of the code was _evolved_."
In addition to this being a definite claim in writing on the part of
Morse that he had devised an alphabetic code in 1836, two years before
Vail had ever heard of the telegraph, it is well to note his scrupulous
insistence on historical accuracy.
In a letter to Professor Gale, referring to reading by sound as well as
by sight, occur the following sentences. (Let me remark, by the way, that
it is interesting to note that Morse thus early recognized the
possibility of reading by sound, an honor which has been claimed for many
others.)
"Exactly at what time I recognized the adaptation of the difference in
the intervals in reading the _letters_ as well as the numerals, I have
now no means of fixing except in a general manner. It was, however,
almost immediately on the construction of the letters by dots and lines,
and this was some little time previous to your seeing the instrument.
"Soon after the first operation of the instrument in 1835, in which the
type for writing numbers were used, I not only conceived the letter type,
but made them from some leads used in the printing-office. I have still
quite a quantity of these type. They were used in Washington as well as
the type for numerals in the winter of 1837-38.
"In the earlier period of the invention it was a matter which experience
alone could determine whether the _numerical_ system, by means of a
numbered dictionary, or the alphabetic mode, by spelling of the words,
was the better. While I perceived some advantages in the alphabetic
system, especially in the writing of proper names, I at that time leaned
rather towards the _numerical_ mode under the impression that it would,
on the whole, be the more rapid. A very short experience, however, showed
the superiority of the alphabetic mode, and the big leaves of the
numbered dictionary, which cost me a world of labor, and which you,
perhaps, remember, were discarded and the alphabetic installed in its
stead." Perhaps the most conclusive evidence that Vail did not invent
this alphabet is contained in his own book on the "American
Electro-Magnetic Telegraph," published in 1845, in which he lays claim to
certain improvements. After describing the dot-and-dash alphabet, he
says:--
"This conventional alphabet was originated on board the packet Sully by
Professor Morse, the very first elements of the invention, and arose from
the necessity of the case; the motion produced by the magnet being
limited to a single action. During the period of the thirteen years _many
plans have been devised by the inventor_ to bring the telegraphic
alphabet to its simplest form."
The italics are mine, for the advocates of Vail have always quoted the
first sentence only, and have said that the word "originated" implies
that, while Vail admitted that the embryo of the alphabet--the dots and
dashes to represent numbers only--was conceived on the Sully, he did not
admit that the alphabetical code was Morse's. But when we read the second
sentence with the words "devised by the inventor," the meaning is so
plain that it is astonishing that any one at all familiar with the facts
could have been misled.
The first form of the alphabet which was attached to Morse's caveat of
October 3, 1837, is shown in the drawing of the type in the accompanying
figure.
[Illustration: ROUGH DRAWING OF ALPHABET BY MORSE
Showing the first form of the alphabet and the changes to the present
form]
It has been stated by some historians that the system of signs for
letters was not attached to the caveat, but a careful reading of the
text, in which reference is made to the drawing, will prove conclusively
that it was. Moreover, in this caveat under section 5, "The Dictionary or
Vocabulary," the very first sentence reads: "The dictionary is a complete
vocabulary of words alphabetically arranged and regularly numbered,
_beginning with the letters of the alphabet_." The italics are mine. The
mistake arose because the drawing was detached from the caveat and
affixed to the various patents which were issued, even after the first
form of the alphabet had been superseded by a better one, the principle,
however, remaining the same, so that it was not necessary to patent the
new form.
As soon as it was proved that it would be simpler to use the letters of
the alphabet in sending intelligence, the first form of the alphabet was
changed in the manner shown in the preceding figure. Exactly when this
was done has not been recorded, but it was after Vail's association with
Morse, and it is quite possible that they worked over the problem
together, but there is no written proof of this, whereas the accompanying
reproduction of calculations in Morse's handwriting will prove that he
gave himself seriously to its consideration.
The large numbers represent the quantities of type found in the
type-cases of a printing-office; for, after puzzling over the question of
the relative frequency of the occurrence of the different letters in the
written language, a visit to the printing-office easily settled the
matter.
This dispute, concerning the paternity of the alphabet, lasting for many
years after the death of both principals, and regrettably creating much
bad feeling, is typical of many which arose in the case of the telegraph,
as well as in that of every other great invention, and it may not be
amiss at this point to introduce the following fugitive note of Morse's,
which, though evidently written many years later, is applicable to this
as well as to other cases:--
"It is quite common to misapprehend the nature and extent of an
improvement without a thorough knowledge of an original invention. A
casual observer is apt to confound the new and the old, and, in noting a
new arrangement, is often led to consider the whole as new. It is,
therefore, necessary to exercise a proper discrimination lest injustice
be done to the various laborers in the same field of invention. I trust
it will not be deemed egotistical on my part if, while conscious of the
unfeigned desire to concede to all who are attempting improvements in the
art of telegraphy that which belongs to them, I should now and then
recognize the familiar features of my own offspring and claim their
paternity."
[Illustration: QUANTITIES OF THE TYPE FOUND IN A PRINTING-OFFICE
Calculation made by Morse to aid him in simplifying alphabet]