It will always be a source of commendable pride to the people of New
Jersey, that their State was never backward in the political, social, or
mechanical progress of this country. In fact, several of the most
important steps in great movements for popular good have been made upon
the soil of the State.
Among the claims to preëminence which New Jersey can make in this
respect is the claim that the first telegraphic message that was ever
transmitted through a wire was sent at the Iron Works at Speedwell, near
Morristown, at which place Professor Morse and Mr. Vail, son of the
proprietor of the works, were making experiments with the telegraph. The
first public message was sent more than six years later from Washington
to Baltimore; but the message at Speedwell stands first, in the point of
priority, of all the dispatches by magnetic telegraph which the world
has known.
When Professor Morse conceived the idea of communicating between distant
points by means of electricity, he was not able to carry out experiments
for himself, and having made the acquaintance of Alfred Vail, son of the
proprietor of the Iron Works at Speedwell, he gave up his business as a
portrait painter and went to Speedwell, where he and Mr. Vail worked
hard in experimenting with the new invention. At last, when they thought
they had brought it to such a point that they could make practical use
of it, they determined to try to send a message through three miles of
wire. If that could be done, they believed they could send one to any
distance desirable.
Currents of electricity had been sent through long lengths of wire by
Mr. Morse in previous experiments, but in these cases nothing more was
attempted than signals; no words or message had been sent, and the
proposed experiment, therefore, was of great importance. Its success or
failure meant success or failure to the magnetic telegraph.
The upper story of a house on the grounds of the Iron Works was one very
large room, and round the walls of this they stretched their three miles
of wire, until the room was encircled by lines of wire, one above
another, but nowhere touching. At one end of this wire was placed a
telegraphic instrument, and at the other, another; and with great
anxiety, although with strong faith in the success of their work, Mr.
Vail sent to Mr. Morse the first real telegraphic message, which ran
thus: "A patient waiter is no loser."
The house in which this first message was sent is still standing, near
the Whippany River, not far out of Morristown. Alfred Vail and Mr.
Morse, assisted by the advice of Professor Joseph Henry, superintendent
of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, continued to work upon the
telegraph at Speedwell; and as Mr. Vail furnished the capital, and did
a great deal of the most important mechanical work, a large portion of
the credit for this wonderful invention is due to him; and the whole
system of telegraphy which now encircles and animates the world may be
said to have sprung from the Iron Works near Morristown.
Another great invention, as important as the telegraph, made its first
appearance before the world in New Jersey. In the frozen waters about
the North Pole, on the rivers of Africa, in the seas of China and Japan,
on the stormy ocean about Cape Horn, and in almost all navigable waters
of the world, are steamboats and steamships,--floating palaces on rivers
and lakes, steam yachts and great Atlantic liners, swift war cruisers
and line-of-battle ships like floating forts of iron and steel; but the
first vessel which was ever propelled by steam paddled its way along the
Delaware River, and was made in New Jersey.
In 1787 John Fitch, who was a native of Connecticut, but who lived at
that time in Trenton, N.J., where he had been a clock maker and
manufacturer of arms, constructed a boat which was moved through the
water by means of a steam engine on board. He had long been working on
this invention, making experiments, and endeavoring to obtain assistance
from people with money. He had applied to Congress to give him the
exclusive right to the great results of his work if he should be
successful; but this aid was refused.
New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, however, gave him the right for
fourteen years to propel vessels upon the waters of those States; and
thus encouraged he built the first steamboat. This little vessel was
imperfect in many ways, and its highest speed was four miles an hour;
but still it was a steamboat, and it was the first that man had ever
seen. Of course, it attracted a good deal of attention; and after it had
been proved that it could move without sails or oars, and that it was
not dangerous, people began to believe in it, and a steamboat company
was organized by Fitch. Another boat was built, which carried passengers
who paid their fare, and afterwards a larger boat was constructed, in
the hope that a good passenger traffic might be established.
We cannot wonder that there should have been a desire among enterprising
people to establish some better method of transportation in travel than
existed in the early days of New Jersey. At first the only roads in the
State were narrow paths, sometimes more than fifty miles long, but only
wide enough for the easy passage of a man on horseback. After that,
better roads gradually came into use; and in the beginning of the
eighteenth century there was a "stage wagon," intended for the carriage
of merchandise, not passengers, which made a trip every two weeks from
Perth Amboy to Philadelphia. This was considered as a great public
convenience; because, before that, there was no regular method of
shipping merchandise from New York to Philadelphia, except by sea.
After a time, stage wagons, which carried passengers, began to run in
some parts of New Jersey; and in 1750 a grand stage line was
established, intended especially for the transportation of travelers. In
an advertisement the proprietor of this line announced to all persons
"who have occasion to transport themselves, goods, stores, or
merchandise from New York to Philadelphia," that he would take them in
"forty-eight hours less than by any other line," and he promised to "use
the people in the best manner." It is stated that this trip by land and
water between New York and Philadelphia lasted seven or eight days,
although it now seems almost impossible to travel so slowly.
Sixteen years afterward, a new and improved line of stage wagons was
established, which were faster and very much more comfortable than any
which had yet been known. They were actually mounted on springs, and it
was promised that the trip would be made in two days in summer, and
three days in winter. These stagecoaches were so much swifter than
anything else of the kind ever known in the State, that they were called
"flying machines."
Fifteen years afterward, the price of conveyance between New York and
Philadelphia on one of these "flying machines" was forty shillings in
gold or silver for each passenger, and as much for each hundred and
fifty pounds of baggage.
The mail facilities in those days were as poor as the methods for
transportation; and we can get an idea of the postal arrangements from
an extract from a New York paper published in 1704, which states, "In
the pleasant month of May, the last storm put our Pennsylvania post a
week behind, and has not yet com'd in." But although this was rather
slow communication, New Jersey was better off than many of the civilized
communities of the day; for she had a regular postal system, which had
been invented by Colonel John Hamilton.
Colonel Hamilton's system was considered so good, that the British
Government gave him a patent for it, and adopted it for the mother
country, it being considered much better than the system then in use.
The mails were generally carried in canvas bags by men on horseback; and
this method of transportation was known as the "express" as a horse and
his rider could go much more rapidly than even the best "flying
machines." Mail service in New Jersey greatly improved before the end of
the century.
But it was very hard to persuade the public to encourage Fitch's new
enterprise, even although it promised cheaper and more rapid
transportation than any methods in use; and of course it was still
harder, from the fact that the new steamboats had not yet gone faster
than a sailing vessel with a good breeze. And so, notwithstanding the
value of a system of navigation by which vessels could be made to move
whether there was a breeze or not, and in any direction no matter how
the wind was blowing, there was very little support to the new
steamboat, and the enterprise was so unprofitable that it was given up.
Nearly ten years after Fitch's largest steamboat had been sold as a
piece of useless property, Robert Fulton made a steamboat which ran on
the Hudson River at the rate of five miles an hour; and after this the
practicability of steam navigation began to be slowly acknowledged. But
the waters of New Jersey were the first which were ever ruffled by the
paddles of a steamboat.
New Jersey has another claim to distinction in connection with steam
navigation, for at the Speedwell Iron Works were manufactured some of
the larger portions of the machinery of the "Savannah," the first
steamship which ever crossed the ocean.