Just in the triumph week of that Great Telegraph which takes its name
from the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, I read in the September number of that
journal the revelations of an observer who was surprised to find that
he had the power of reading, as they run, the revelations of the wire.
I had the hope that he was about to explain to the public the more
general use of this instrument,--which, with a stupid fatuity, the
public has, as yet, failed to grasp. Because its signals have been
first applied by means of electro-magnetism, and afterwards by means of
the chemical power of electricity, the many-headed people refuses to
avail itself, as it might do very easily, of the same signals, for the
simpler transmission of intelligence,--whatever the power employed.
The great invention of Mr. Morse is his register and alphabet. He
himself eagerly disclaims any pretension to the original conception of
the use of electricity as an errand-boy. Hundreds of people had thought
of that and suggested it; but Morse was the first to give the
errand-boy such a written message, that he could not lose it on the
way, nor mistake it when he arrived. The public, eager to thank Morse,
as he deserves, thanks him for something he did not invent. For this he
probably cares very little. Nor do I care more. But the public does not
thank him for what he did originate,--this invaluable and simple
alphabet. Now, as I use it myself in every detail of life, and see
every hour how the public might use it, if it chose, I am really sorry
for this negligence,--both on the score of his fame, and of general
convenience.
Please to understand, then, ignorant Reader, that this curious alphabet
reduces all the complex machinery of Cadmus and the rest of the
writing-masters to characters as simple as can be made by a dot, a
space, and a line, variously combined. Thus, the marks [Morse code:
.-.] designate the letter A. The marks [Morse code: -...] designate the
letter B. All the other letters are designated in as simple a manner.
Now I am stripping myself of one of the private comforts of my life,
(but what will one not do for mankind?) when I explain that this simple
alphabet need not be confined to electrical signals. _Long_ and _short_
make it all,--and wherever long and short can be combined, be it in
marks, sounds, sneezes, fainting-fits, canes, or children, ideas can be
conveyed by this arrangement of the long and short together. Only last
night I was talking scandal with Mrs. Wilberforce at a summer party at
the Hammersmiths. To my amazement, my wife, who scarcely can play "The
Fisher's Hornpipe," interrupted us by asking Mrs. Wilberforce if she
could give her the idea of an air in "The Butcher of Turin."
Mrs. Wilberforce had never heard that opera,--indeed, had never heard
of it. My angel-wife was surprised,--stood thrumming at the
piano,--wondered she could not catch this very odd bit of discordant
accord at all,--but checked herself in her effort, as soon as I
observed that her long notes and short notes, in their tum-tee,
tee,--tee-tee, tee-tum tum, meant, "He's her brother." The conversation
on her side turned from "The Butcher of Turin," and I had just time, on
the hint thus given me by Mrs. I., to pass a grateful eulogium on the
distinguished statesman whom Mrs. Wilberforce, with all a sister's
care, had rocked in his baby-cradle,--whom, but for my wife's long and
short notes, I should have clumsily abused among the other statesmen of
the day.
You will see, in an instant, awakening Reader, that it is not the
business simply of "operators" in telegraphic dens to know this Morse
alphabet, but your business, and that of every man and woman. If our
school-committees understood the times, it would be taught, even before
phonography or physiology, at school. I believe both these sciences now
precede the old English alphabet.
As I write these words, the bell of the South Congregational strikes
dong, dong, dong;--dong, dong, dong, dong,--dong,--dong. Nobody has
unlocked the church-door. The old tin sign, "In case of fire, the key
will be found at the opposite house," has long since been taken down,
and made into the nose of a water-pot. Yet there is no Goody Two-Shoes
locked in. No! But, thanks to Dr. Channing's Fire-Alarm, the bell is
informing the South End that there is a fire in District
Dong-dong-dong,--that is to say, District No. 3. Before I have
explained to you so far, the "Eagle" engine, with a good deal of noise,
has passed the house on its way to that fated district. An immense
improvement this on the old system, when the engines radiated from
their houses in every possible direction, and the fire was extinguished
by the few machines whose lines of quest happened to cross each other
at the particular place where the child had been building cob-houses
out of lucifer-matches in a paper-warehouse. Yes, it is a very great
improvement. All those persons, like you and me, who have no property
in District Dong-dong-dong, can now sit at home at ease,--and little
need we think upon the mud above the knees of those who have property
in that district and are running to look after it. But for them the
improvement only brings misery. You arrive wet, hot or cold, or both,
at the large District No. 3, to find that the lucifer-matches were half
a mile from your store,--and that your own private watchman, even, had
not been waked by the working of the distant engines. Wet
property-holder, as you walk home, consider this. When you are next in
the Common Council, vote an appropriation for applying Morse's alphabet
of long and short to the bells. Then they can be made to sound
intelligibly. Daung ding ding,--ding,--ding daung,--daung daung daung,
and so on, will tell you, as you wake in the night, that it is Mr. B.'s
store which is on fire, and not yours, or that it is yours, and not
his. This is not only a convenience to you and a relief to your wife
and family, who will thus be spared your excursions to unavailable and
unsatisfactory fires, and your somewhat irritated return,--it will be a
great relief to the Fire Department. How placid the operations of a
fire where none attend except on business! The various engines arrive,
but no throng of distant citizens, men and boys, fearful of the
destruction of their all. They have all roused on their pillows to
learn that it is No. 530 Pearl Street which is in flames. All but the
owner of No. 530 Pearl Street have dropped back to sleep. He alone has
rapidly repaired to the scene. That is he, who stands in the uncrowded
street with the Chief Engineer, on the deck of No. 18, as she plays
away. His property destroyed, the engines retire,--he mentions the
amount of his insurance to those persons who represent the daily press,
they all retire to their homes,--and the whole is finished as simply,
almost, as was his private entry in his day-book the afternoon before.
This is what might be, if the magnetic alarm only struck _long_ and
_short_, and we had all learned Morse's alphabet. Indeed, there is
nothing the bells could not tell, if you would only give them time
enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But,
without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and
every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail
Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard
should report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy had left town
for his country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to
speak articulately, in language regarding which the dullest imagination
need not be at loss,
"Turn again, Higginbottom,
Lord Mayor of Boston!"
I have suggested the propriety of introducing this alphabet into the
primary schools. I need not say I have taught it to my own
children,--and I have been gratified to see how rapidly it made head,
against the more complex alphabet, in the grammar schools. Of course it
does;--an alphabet of two characters matched against one of
twenty-six,--or of forty-odd, as the very odd one of the phono-typists
employs! On the Franklin-medal-day I went to the Johnson-School
examination. One of the committee asked a nice girl, what was the
capital of Brazil. The child looked tired and pale, and, for an
instant, hesitated. But, before she had time to commit herself, all
answering was rendered impossible by an awful turn of whooping-cough
which one of my own sons was seized with,--who had gone to the
examination with me. Hawm, hem hem;--hem hem hem;--hem, hem;--hawm, hem
hem;--hem hem hem;--hem, hem,--barked the poor child, who was at the
opposite extreme of the school-room. The spectators and the committee
looked to see him fall dead with a broken blood-vessel. I confess that
I felt no alarm, after I observed that some of his gasps were long and
some very staccato;--nor did pretty little Mabel Warren. She recovered
her color,--and, as soon as silence was in the least restored,
answered, "_Rio_ is the capital of Brazil,"--as modestly and properly
as if she had been taught it in her cradle. They are nothing but
children, any of them,--but that afternoon, after they had done all the
singing the city needed for its annual entertainment of the singers, I
saw Bob and Mabel start for a long expedition into West Roxbury,--and
when he came back, I know it was a long featherfew, from her prize
school-bouquet, that he pressed in his Greene's "Analysis," with a
short frond of maiden's hair.
I hope nobody will write a letter to "The Atlantic," to say that these
are very trifling uses. The communication of useful information is
never trifling. It is as important to save a nice child from
mortification on examination-day, as it is to tell Mr. Fremont that he
is not elected President. If, however, the reader is distressed,
because these illustrations do not seem to his more benighted
observation to belong to the big bow-wow strain of human life, let him
consider the arrangement which ought to have been made years since, for
lee shores, railroad collisions, and that curious class of maritime
accidents where one steamer runs into another under the impression that
she is a light-house. Imagine the Morse alphabet applied to a
steam-whistle, which is often heard five miles. It needs only _long_
and _short_ again. "_Stop Comet_," for instance, when you send it down
the railroad line, by the wire, is expressed thus: ... - .. .... .. .
.. -- . - Very good message, if Comet happens to be at the telegraph
station when it comes! But what if Comet has gone by? Much good will
your trumpery message do then! If, however, you have the wit to sound
your long and short on an engine-whistle, thus:--Scre scre, scre;
screeee; scre scre; scre scre scre scre; scre scre--scre, scre scre,
screeeee scrceeee; scre; screeeee;--why, then the whole neighborhood,
for five miles round, will know that Comet must stop, if only they
understand spoken language,--and, among others, the engineman of Comet
will understand it; and Comet will not run into that wreck of worlds
which gives the order,--with his nucleus of hot iron and his tail of
five hundred tons of coal.--So, of the signals which fog-bells
can give, attached to light-houses. How excellent to have them
proclaim through the darkness, "I am Wall"! Or of signals for
steamship-engineers. When our friends were on board the "Arabia" the
other day, and she and the "Europa" pitched into each other,--as if, on
that happy week, all the continents were to kiss and join hands all
round,--how great the relief to the passengers on each, if, through
every night of their passage, collision had been prevented by this
simple expedient! One boat would have screamed, "Europa, Europa,
Europa," from night to morning,--and the other, "Arabia, Arabia,
Arabia,"--and neither would have been mistaken, as one unfortunately
was, for a light-house.
The long and short of it is, that whoever can mark distinctions of time
can use this alphabet of long-and-short, however he may mark them. It
is, therefore, within the compass of all intelligent beings, except
those who are no longer conscious of the passage of time, having
exchanged its limitations for the wider sweep of eternity. The
illimitable range of this alphabet, however, is not half disclosed when
this has been said. Most articulate language addresses itself to one
sense, or at most to two, sight and sound. I see, as I write, that the
particular illustrations I have given are all of them confined to
signals seen or signals heard. But the dot-and-line alphabet, in the
few years of its history, has already shown that it is not restricted
to these two senses, but makes itself intelligible to all. Its message,
of course, is heard as well as read. Any good operator understands the
sounds of its ticks upon the flowing strip of paper, as well as when he
sees it. As he lies in his cot at midnight, he will expound the passing
message without striking a light to see it. But this is only what may
be said of any written language. You can read this article to your
wife, or she can read it, as she prefers; that is, she chooses whether
it shall address her eye or her ear. But the long-and-short alphabet of
Morse and his imitators despises such narrow range. It addresses
whichever of the five senses the listener chooses. This fact is
illustrated by a curious set of anecdotes--never yet put in print, I
think--of that critical dispatch which in one night announced General
Taylor's death to this whole land. Most of the readers of these lines
probably read that dispatch in the morning's paper. The compositors and
editors had read it. To them it was a dispatch to the eye. But half the
operators at the stations _heard_ it ticked out, by the register
stroke, and knew it before they wrote it down for the press. To them it
was a dispatch to the ear. My good friend Langenzunge had not that
resource. He had just been promised, by the General himself, (under
whom he served at Palo Alto,) the office of Superintendent of the
Rocky-Mountain Lines. He was returning from Washington over the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on a freight-train, when he heard of the
President's danger. Langenzunge loved Old Rough and Ready,--and he felt
badly about his own office, too. But his extempore train chose to stop
at a forsaken shanty-village on the Potomac, for four mortal hours, at
midnight. What does he do, but walk down the line into the darkness,
climb a telegraph-post, cut a wire, and apply the two ends to his
tongue, to _taste_, at the fatal moment, the words, "Died at half past
ten." Poor Langenzunge! he hardly had nerve to solder the wire again.
Cogs told me that they had just fitted up the Naguadavick stations with
Bain's chemical revolving disc. This disc is charged with a salt of
potash, which, when the electric spark passes through it, is changed to
Prussian blue. Your dispatch is noiselessly written in dark blue dots
and lines.
Just as the disc started on that fatal dispatch, and Cogs bent over it
to read, his spirit-lamp blew up,--as the dear things will. They were
beside themselves in the lonely, dark office; but, while the men were
fumbling for matches, which would not go, Cogs's sister, Nydia, a sweet
blind girl, who had learned Bain's alphabet from Dr. Howe at South
Boston, bent over the chemical paper, and _smelt_ out the prussiate of
potash, as it formed itself in lines and dots to tell the sad story.
Almost anybody used to reading the blind books can read the embossed
Morse messages with the finger,--and so this message was read at all
the midnight way-stations where no night-work is expected, and where
the companies do not supply fluid or oil. Within my narrow circle of
acquaintance, therefore, there were these simultaneous instances, where
the same message was seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt. So
universal is the dot-and-line alphabet,--for Bain's is on the same
principle as Morse's.
The reader sees, therefore, first, that the dot-and-line alphabet can
be employed by any being who has command of any long and short
symbols,--be they long and short notches, such as Robinson Crusoe kept
his accounts with, or long and short waves of electricity, such as
these which Valentia is sending across to the Newfoundland Bay, so
prophetically and appropriately named "The Bay of Bulls." Also, I hope
the reader sees that the alphabet can be understood by any intelligent
being who has any one of the five senses left him,--by all rational
men, that is, excepting the few eyeless deaf persons who have lost both
taste and smell in some complete paralysis. The use of Morse's
telegraph is by no means confined to the small clique who possess or
who understand electrical batteries. It is not only the torpedo or the
_Gymnotus electricus_ that can send us messages from the ocean. Whales
in the sea can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only
note the difference between long spoutings and short ones. And they can
listen, too. If they will only note the difference between long and
short, the eel of Ocean's bottom may feel on his slippery skin the
smooth messages of our Presidents, and the catfish, in his darkness,
look fearless on the secrets of a Queen. Any beast, bird, fish, or
insect, which can discriminate between long and short, may use the
telegraphic alphabet, if he have sense enough. Any creature, which can
hear, smell, taste, feel, or see, may take note of its signals, if he
can understand them. A tired listener at church, by properly varying
his long yawns and his short ones, may express his opinion of the
sermon to the opposite gallery before the sermon is done. A dumb
tobacconist may trade with his customers in an alphabet of short-sixes
and long-nines. A beleaguered Sebastopol may explain its wants to the
relieving army beyond the line of the Chernaya, by the lispings of its
short Paixhans and its long twenty-fours.
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