PROFESSOR MORSE: HIS ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
Communication of intelligence by concerted signals is as old as the
human race, and by all, except the white race, remains where it was
six thousand years ago. The smokes raised on successive hills to
give warning of the approach of strangers, or enemies, were found
to be the same by Frémont in his western explorations which were
described by Herodotus as used for the same purpose by the barbarian
nations of his time: the white race alone has made advances upon
that rude and imperfect mode of communication, and brought the art
to a marvellous perfection, but only after the intervention of
thousands of years. It was not until the siege of Vienna by the
Turks, that the very limited intelligence between the besieged in a
city and their friends outside, was established by the telegraph:
and it was not until the breaking out of the French revolution that
that mode of intelligence was applied to the centre and to the
circumference of a country: and at that point it was stationary
for fifty years. It was reserved for our own day, and our own
country to make the improvement which annihilates distance, which
disregards weather and darkness, and which rivals the tongue and the
pen in the precision and infinitude of its messages. Dr. Franklin
first broached the idea of using electricity for communicating
intelligence: Professor Morse gave practical application to his
idea. This gentleman was a portrait painter by profession, and had
been to Europe to perfect himself in his art. Returning in the
autumn of 1832, and while making the voyage, the recent discoveries
and experiments in electro-magnetism, and the affinity of
electricity to magnetism, or rather their probable identity, became
a subject of casual conversation between himself and a few of the
passengers. It had recently been discovered that an electric spark
could be obtained from a magnet, and this discovery had introduced a
new branch of science, to wit: magneto-electricity. Dr. Franklin's
experiments on the velocity of electricity, exceeding that of
light, and exceeding 180,000 miles in a moment, the feasibility
of making electricity the means of telegraphic intercourse, that
is to say of writing at a distance, struck him with great force,
and became the absorbing subject of his meditations. The idea of
telegraphing by electricity was new to him. Fortunately he did not
know that some eminent philosophers had before conceived the same
idea, but without inventing a plan by which the thought could be
realized. Knowing nothing of their ideas, he was not embarrassed
or impeded by the false lights of their mistakes. As the idea
was original with him, so was his plan. All previous modes of
telegraphing had been by evanescent signs: the distinctive feature
of Morse's plan was the self-recording property of the apparatus,
with its ordinarily inseparable characteristic of audible clicks,
answering the purposes of speech; for, in impressing the characters,
the sounds emitted by the machinery gave notice of each that was
struck, as well understood by the practised ear as the recorded
language was by the eye. In this he became the inventor of a new
art--the art of telegraphic recording, or imprinting characters
telegraphically.
Mr. Morse then had his invention complete in his head, and his labor
then begun to construct the machinery and types to reduce it to
practice, in which having succeeded to the entire satisfaction of a
limited number of observers in the years 1836 and '37, he laid it
before Congress in the year 1838, made an exhibit of its working
before a committee, and received a favorable report. Much time was
then lost in vain efforts to procure patents in England and France,
and returning to Congress in 1842, an appropriation of $30,000 was
asked for to enable the inventor to test his discovery on a line of
forty miles, between Washington and Baltimore. The appropriation
was granted--the preparations completed by the spring of 1844, and
messages exchanged instantaneously between the two points. The line
was soon extended to New York, and since so multiplied, that the
Morse electro-magnetic telegraph now works over 80,000 miles in
America and 50,000 in Europe. It is one of the marvellous results of
science, putting people who are thousands of miles apart in instant
communication with the accuracy of a face to face conversation. Its
wonderful advantages are felt in social, political, commercial and
military communications, and, in conjunction with the steam car, is
destined to work a total revolution in the art of defensive warfare.
It puts an end to defensive war on the ocean, to the necessity of
fortifications, except to delay for a few days the bombardment
of a city. The approach of invaders upon any point, telegraphed
through the country, brings down in the flying cars myriads of
citizen soldiers, arms in hand and provisions in abundance, to
overwhelm with numbers any possible invading force. It will dispense
with fleets and standing armies, and all the vast, cumbrous, and
expensive machinery of a modern army. Far from dreading an invasion,
the telegraph and the car may defy and dare it--may invite any
number of foreign troops to land--and assure the whole of them of
death or captivity, from myriads of volunteers launched upon them
hourly from the first moment of landing until the last invader is a
corpse or a prisoner.