ELECTRICITY: THE TELEGRAPH AND THE TELEPHONE
The great miracle of the twentieth century is electricity. If the
printing press is the brain of civilization and the steam engine is
its heart, electric wires are its nervous system. Steam is a giant;
electricity is a witch. There is something uncanny about it. Man
writes volumes about electricity; calls it positive and negative and
measures it in ohms and volts; gives courses to explain it in his
schools and universities; kills criminals, cures the sick, and
scatters darkness with it; makes it whirl him through space; compels
it to bear his whisper through hundreds of miles, and can make it fly
around the entire earth with his written word--and yet no man knows
what electricity is. Electricity exists, and has always existed, from
the back of a cat to the infinite arch of the sky.
A hundred years ago practically nothing was known of electricity.
Persons now living were born into a world that had never seen an
electric telegraph, a telephone, an electric car, or an electric
light. We are living in the morning of electrical knowledge, and what
the day may bring no one can imagine. Americans have given the world
many of the greatest inventions, and in the field of electricity they
have given it nearly everything of value. It is to American ingenuity
that civilization is indebted for the electrical telegraph, the
sub-marine cable, the telephone, the electric light, and the electric
car. The names of Morse, Vail, Field, Bell, Brush, Gray, Edison, and
Sprague--all American electrical inventors--will always be prominent
in the list of the world's great benefactors.
If you will rub a stick of sealing wax briskly with a woolen cloth,
you will find that the stick of wax will attract to itself bits of
bran, small shreds of paper, and the like. This is the simplest
experiment in electricity. In the same way, by rubbing amber with
silk, Thales, a Greek philosopher who lived in the sixth century
before Christ, is thought to have discovered electricity. The Greek
word for _amber_ is _elektron_. Because of the supposed discovery of
electricity in amber by Thales, the English word _electricity_ was
"coined" and used for the first time by William Gilbert, a British
physician and scientist, who lived during the reigns of Elizabeth and
James.
For nearly twenty-five centuries, reaching from the time of Thales to
the opening of the nineteenth century, the world learned practically
nothing about electricity. The start in modern electrical knowledge
was made by Galvani, an Italian scientist, born in 1737, who just
before the last century dawned showed that electricity can be produced
by the contact of metals with fluids. The term _galvanic_, used in
connection with electricity, comes from the name of this investigator.
Galvani's experiments suggested the electric battery to Volta, another
Italian scientist who was born in 1745. The electrical word _voltaic_
is in honor of Volta. In 1752 Benjamin Franklin flew his kite into the
thunderstorm and proved that lightning is electricity. A little later
Hans Christian Oersted, a Danish investigator, pointed out the
relation between electricity and magnetism. In the early part of the
nineteenth century, Michael Faraday, an eminent English physicist,
discovered the possibility of producing electric currents through the
motion of a magnet. Faraday's discovery led to the electric dynamo
machine, the source of modern power over electricity.
The oldest and greatest of electrical inventions is the telegraph.
_Tele_ is a Greek adverb meaning "afar." _Graph_ comes from the Greek
verb "to write." _Telegraph_ therefore means "to write afar."
The idea of telegraphic communication is more than two and a half
centuries old. In 1632 Galileo referred to a secret art of
communicating at great distances by means of magnetic needles. In 1753
there appeared in the _Scots Magazine_ an article signed "C. M."
(since ascertained to have been Charles Morrison, of Greenock in
Scotland) setting forth a fairly clear idea of the electric telegraph.
Joseph Henry, of Washington, D.C., in 1831 signaled through an
electrical circuit a mile in length. The first commercially successful
telegraph was devised in 1837 by Samuel F. B. Morse, an American.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts,
April 27, 1791. He was educated in the common schools of his native
town and in Yale University, where he was graduated in 1810. After
graduation, like Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, he went to
Europe to study art, and became successful as an artist. On his return
to America in 1832, one of his fellow passengers on the ship was
Charles T. Jackson, who had been studying electricity in Paris. Jackson
told Morse of some experiments in electricity which the French had been
making, and remarked that it would be a good thing if news could be
transmitted through long distances by electricity. Morse replied, "Why
can't it be done?" From that hour he gave his time and energy to the
invention of the electric telegraph. During the remainder of the voyage
he drew plans for apparatus and tried to devise an electric alphabet.
In 1837 he put two instruments at the ends of a short line through
which he sent and received messages. About this time he met a man who
was destined to be of great service to him in promoting his invention,
and one who deserves almost as much credit for it as Morse himself.
This was Alfred Vail.
Vail was born at Morristown, New Jersey, September 25, 1807. He was a
son of Stephen Vail, the wealthy owner of the Speedwell iron works.
One day in September, 1837, after Morse had completed his apparatus, he
was invited to exhibit it at the University of the City of New York.
Alfred Vail was a student in the university at the time and was one of
the spectators to whom the apparatus was exhibited. He was much
impressed with it. Morse needed money, and Alfred Vail's father had it.
Morse was invited to the home of the Vails in Speedwell, where the
matter of the invention was talked over. The sum of two thousand
dollars was necessary to get the invention started. Stephen Vail agreed
to furnish the money. Alfred Vail was to construct apparatus and
exhibit it to Congress. For this he was to have one-fourth of the
proceeds arising from the patent.
Alfred Vail set to work to construct the apparatus. A room in his
father's factory was set apart for this purpose. William Baxter, a
bright mechanic employed in the iron shops, was chosen to assist him.
As secrecy was required for the work, the room was kept locked. For
several months Vail and Baxter occupied together the locked room,
sharing each other's confidence and each other's elation or
disappointment as the work went well or ill. On January 6, 1838,
Baxter, without hat or coat, rushed to the elder Vail's residence to
announce that the apparatus was completed.
Mr. Vail had become discouraged. However, he went to see the trial of
the apparatus. He found his son at one end of the three miles of wire
that was stretched around the room, and Morse at the other. After a
short explanation had been made to him, he wrote on a piece of paper,
"A patient waiter is no loser." He then said to his son, "If you can
send this, and Mr. Morse can read it at the other end, I shall be
convinced." The message was sent and read at the other end of the wire.
The apparatus was taken to Washington, where it created not only wonder
but excitement.
[Illustration: SAMUEL F. B. MORSE]
In September, 1837, Morse filed an application for a patent on his
invention. In December of the same year he failed in his effort to
secure from Congress an appropriation for an experimental line which he
proposed to build between Washington and Baltimore. In May, 1838, he
went to Europe seeking aid. The governments there refused him funds or
patents. In May, 1839, he returned to the United States and began an
heroic struggle for recognition. During this period he often suffered
for the barest necessities of life. Sometimes he could afford but a
single meal in twenty-four hours.
Finally, after repeated disappointments, when Morse himself had almost
given up hope, the House of Representatives of the Twenty-seventh
Congress, on the last night of its session, March 3, 1843, by a vote of
ninety to eighty-two, appropriated thirty thousand dollars for building
a trial line between Washington and Baltimore. After the bill had
passed the House, the outlook for its passage in the Senate was not
bright. One Senator who was favorable to the bill advised Morse to
"give it up, return home, and think no more of it." The bill had been
made the object of opposition and ridicule; one prominent official, to
show his contempt for the project, proposed that half the amount asked
for should be used in mesmeric experiments. Morse, believing that the
Senate would defeat the appropriation, went to his lodging place to
retire for the night. He found that after paying the amount he owed at
the hotel, he would have less than forty cents left. Early the next
morning information reached him that a little before midnight the
Senate had passed the bill. Apparent failure had turned into victory;
the fight was won.
"Work was begun at once.[1] On April 30 the line reached Annapolis
Junction, twenty-two miles from Washington, and was operated with
satisfactory results.
[1] From an account by Stephen Vail used in _Graded Literature
Readers_, by permission of _Truth_.
"May 1, 1844, was the date upon which the Whig convention was to
assemble in Baltimore, to nominate the candidates of that party for
President and Vice-President. It was arranged between Morse and Vail
that the latter should obtain from the passengers upon the afternoon
train from Baltimore to Washington, when it stopped at Annapolis
Junction, information of the proceedings of the convention and transmit
it at once to Morse at the Capitol in Washington.
"The train arrived at half-past three o'clock, and from the passengers,
among whom were many of the delegates to the convention, Mr. Vail
ascertained that the convention had assembled, nominated the
candidates, and adjourned. This information he at once dispatched to
Morse, with whom was gathered a number of prominent men who had been
invited to be present. Morse sat awaiting the prearranged signal from
Vail, when suddenly there came from the instrument the understood
clicking, and as the mechanism started, unwinding the ribbon of paper
upon which came the embossed dots and dashes, the complete success of
the telegraph over twenty-two miles of wire was established.
"Slowly came the message. When it had ended, Morse rose and said:
'Gentlemen, the convention has adjourned. The train bearing that
information has just left Annapolis Junction for Washington, and Mr.
Vail has telegraphed me the ticket nominated, and it is--' he
hesitated, holding in his hand the final proof of victory over space,
'it is--it is Clay and Frelinghuysen.'
"'You are quizzing us,' was the quiet remark. 'It's easy enough for you
to guess that Clay is at the head of the ticket, but Frelinghuysen--who
is Frelinghuysen?'
"'I only know,' was the dignified answer, 'that it is the name Mr. Vail
has sent to me from Annapolis Junction, where he had the news five
minutes ago from the train bound this way bearing the delegates.'
"At that time the twenty-two miles from the Junction to Washington
required an hour and a quarter for the fastest trains, and long before
the train reached Washington the newsboys--enterprising even in those
days--had their 'extras' upon the streets, their headings 'By
Telegraph' telling the story, and being the first time that such a
legend had ever appeared upon a printed sheet.
"A great and enthusiastic crowd greeted the delegates as they alighted
from the train at the station. They were struck dumb with astonishment
when they heard the people hurrahing for 'Clay and Frelinghuysen,' and
saw in cold type before their very eyes the information which they
supposed was exclusively their own, but which had preceded them 'by
telegraph.' They had asked Mr. Vail at the Junction what he was doing
when they saw him working the telegraph key, and when he told them,
they joked about it most glibly, for no one had any belief in the
success of the telegraph."
[Illustration: THE FIRST MESSAGE BY TELEGRAPH]
By May 23 the entire line was completed from Washington to Baltimore.
On the next day, May 24, 1844, Morse from Washington sent to Vail at
Baltimore the first message ever sent over the completed wire, "What
hath God wrought?"
This famous message was dictated by Miss Ellsworth, daughter of the
commissioner of patents at that time. She had taken a keen interest in
the success of the bill appropriating the thirty thousand dollars for
the experiment, and was the first to convey to Morse the news that the
bill had passed. Morse thereupon gave Miss Ellsworth his promise that
the first message to pass over the line should be dictated by her. A
bit of the original wire and the receiver that Vail used at Baltimore
are now preserved in the National Museum in Washington. The transmitter
used by Morse at the Washington end of the line has been lost.
Morse lived to see his system of telegraphy adopted by the United
States, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Australia.
Ninety-five per cent of all telegraphy is by his system. He finally
received a large fortune from his invention. Unlike Columbus, Morse was
honored in his lifetime for his achievement. Foreign nations bestowed
upon him honors and medals, and in August, 1858, a convention of
European powers called by Napoleon III at Paris gave Morse four hundred
thousand francs (about $80,000) as a testimonial of his services to
civilization. In October, 1842, he laid the first sub-marine telegraph
line. It was across the harbor of New York. Later he assisted Peter
Cooper and Cyrus W. Field in their efforts to lay the first Atlantic
cable. Honored by all the civilized world, he died in New York City
April 2, 1872. Thirteen years earlier Vail had died at his home in
Morristown, New Jersey.
In the Morse system the alphabet is represented by combinations of
dots and dashes. The dots denote short currents of electricity flowing
through the wire; the dashes, longer ones. Credit for the alphabet
really belongs to Vail; Morse had devised a somewhat complicated
system, but Vail invented the dots and dashes. He discovered that _e_
and _t_ are the most frequently used letters. He denoted _e_ by one
dot, or one short current; _t_ he indicated by one dash, or one long
current. The other letters are denoted by dots and dashes, as _a_, one
dot and one dash; _b_, one dash and three dots, etc.
In 1838 Steinheil, a German investigator, contributed an important
element to the practical operation of the electric telegraph by
discovering that the earth could take the place of the return wire,
which up to that time had been deemed necessary to complete the
circuit.
At first only one message could be sent over a wire at a time. Now
several messages may be transmitted in opposite directions over the
same wire at the same time.
Wireless telegraphy is based on the principle discovered and announced
by the English scientist Michael Faraday, that heat, light, and
electricity are transmitted by ether waves, and that these ether waves
permeate all space. The first to demonstrate the practical operation of
wireless telegraphy was Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian. In 1890 he
undertook experiments to prove his theory that the electric current
readily passes through any substance, and when once started in a given
direction follows a direct course without the aid of a conductor.
Marconi made the first practical demonstration of wireless telegraphy
in 1896. In March, 1899, he sent a wireless message across the English
channel from France to England. In December, 1901, be began his first
experiments in wireless telegraphy across the Atlantic. In December of
the following year the first official trans-Atlantic wireless message
was sent. Now wireless telegraphic messages are sent regularly to and
from moving ships in mid-ocean, and across the three thousand miles of
the Atlantic between Europe and America.
One of the most striking illustrations of the power of perseverance is
the successful struggle of Cyrus West Field in laying the Atlantic
cable. Mr. Field was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, November 30,
1819. His schooling, which was slight, was secured in his native town.
When he was fifteen years old, he secured a position in a business
house in New York City at a salary of fifty dollars a year. He
subsequently founded a prosperous business in the manufacture and sale
of paper. In 1854 Mr. Field's attention was directed to an attempt to
lay an electric cable at Newfoundland, which had failed for want of
funds. The idea of laying a cable across the Atlantic occurred to him.
He laid his plans before a number of prominent citizens of New York. On
four successive evenings they met at his home to study the project, and
they finally decided to undertake it. On May 6, 1854, a company was
organized to lay the cable, with Peter Cooper as president.
The next twelve years Field devoted exclusively to the cable. He went
to England thirty times. The first cable was brought from England and
was to be laid across the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Forty miles had been
successfully laid, when a storm arose and the cable was cut in order to
save the ship. Then came a year's delay. Meantime the bottom of the sea
was being explored and a vast tableland was discovered stretching from
Newfoundland to Ireland. Field went to England, where he had little
difficulty in organizing a company, and work was then begun on the
construction of a new cable. Next he laid his enterprise before
Congress, and asked for money. An appropriation bill was finally passed
in the Senate by a majority of one, and was signed by President Pierce
on March 3, 1857, the day before he retired from office. Field returned
to England to superintend the construction of the cable and to make
preparations for laying it. At last it was ready, tested, and coiled on
the ship. On August 11, 1857, the sixth day out, after three hundred
and thirty-five miles had been laid, the cable parted.
Lord Clarendon, in an interview with Field, had remarked: "But,
suppose you don't succeed? Suppose you make the attempt and fail--your
cable is lost in the sea--then what will you do?" The reply came
promptly, "Charge it to profit and loss, and go to work to lay
another." Lord Clarendon was so well pleased with the reply that he
pledged his aid. The loss of three hundred and thirty-five miles of
cable was the loss of half a million dollars. Field came back to
America and secured from the Secretary of the Navy the vessels needed
for another trial. On June 10, 1858, the United States steam frigate
_Niagara_, then the largest in the world, and the British ship
_Agamemnon_ set out from opposite shores, bound for mid-ocean. The
vessels met, and the two sections of the cable were spliced; then they
began laying it toward both shores at the same time. After a little
more than a hundred miles had been laid, this cable parted in
mid-ocean, and Field hurried to London to meet the discouraged
directors.
On July 17, the ships set sail again for mid-ocean. The cable was
spliced in fifteen hundred fathoms of water and again the ships
started for opposite shores. Field was on the _Niagara_ headed toward
Newfoundland. Scarcely any one looked for success. Field was the only
man who kept up courage through this trying period. On August 5, 1858,
he telegraphed the safe arrival of the ship at Newfoundland. The shore
ends of the cable were laid and on August 16 a message from Queen
Victoria of England to President Buchanan flashed under the sea. There
was great excitement everywhere. The two worlds had been tied together
with a strange electric nerve.
[Illustration: CYRUS W. FIELD]
On the evening of the first of September a great ovation was tendered
Field in New York. National salutes were fired; processions were
formed; there was an address by the mayor, and late at night a great
banquet. While the banquet was in progress, the cable parted.
Everyone except Field was disheartened. He went to work again, and
during the next five years, the long years of the Civil War, he
labored unceasingly. A larger cable with a greater resisting force was
made. On the twenty-third of July, 1865, the steamship _Great Eastern_
began another attempt to lay the cable. When it was within six hundred
miles of Newfoundland, the cable parted again. For nine days attempts
were made, in two and a half miles of water, to grapple the cable,
splice it, and continue the work of laying it. Three times the cable
was grappled, but the apparatus on the ship was not strong enough to
hoist it aboard. Still Field never faltered. Another British company
was formed and another cable was constructed. The _Great Eastern_ was
again loaded and on July 13, a Friday, set sail westward laying the
cable. After an uncertain voyage of two weeks the _Great Eastern_
arrived at Newfoundland, and the undertaking had again been
successfully accomplished. Field telegraphed his arrival as follows:
"_Hearts Content, July 27, 1866_. We arrived here at nine o'clock this
morning. All well. Thank God, the cable is laid, and is in perfect
working order. CYRUS W. FIELD."
Twelve years of unfaltering perseverance had won. Honors were heaped
upon Field. Congress voted him a gold medal and the thanks of the
nation. The prime minister of Great Britain declared that only the fact
of his being the citizen of another nation prevented his receiving the
highest honors in the power of the British government to bestow. The
Paris "Exposition Universelle" of 1867 honored him with the Grand
Medal, the highest prize it had to give.
Mr. Field was afterward interested in the laying of cables connecting
Europe, India, China, Australia, the West Indies, and South America. In
1880-81 he made a trip around the world, full of satisfaction in his
own part in making a new era of the world's civilization. He died at
his home in New York on July 11, 1892.
The effect of the electric telegraph on government, intelligence, and
civilization in general can scarcely be overstated. Sydney Smith,
writing to Earl Grey after the admission of California into the United
States, said that this marked an end to the great American republic;
for how could people with such diversified interests, with such natural
barriers, hold together? He did not foresee how strongly a fine copper
wire could bind together the two seaboards and the great plains of the
interior. Without the electric telegraph, neither the great daily
newspaper nor the modern operation of railroads would be possible. It
wipes away the natural boundaries of nations and makes neighbors of all
men.
In 1819 Sir Charles Wheatsone, an English physicist, invented an
instrument popularly known as the "magic lyre," but which he called
the telephone. The first part of this word is the same Greek adverb
_tele_ that is found in _telegraph_. The _phone_ is from another Greek
word meaning "to sound." To _telephone_, therefore, means "to sound
afar." The use of the English word _telephone_ by Wheatsone is
historically the first appearance of the word in our language. His
device did nothing but reproduce music by means of sounding boards.
The inventor of the modern telephone is Alexander Graham Bell.
Mr. Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, March 3, 1847. His father was
Alexander Melville Bell, a Scotch educator, inventor of a system of
visible speech, and author of some text-books on elocution. His
grandfather was Alexander Bell, noted for his efforts to remove
impediments of speech. Alexander Graham Bell was therefore well fitted
by heredity for the invention of an instrument to transmit speech. He
was educated in the Edinburgh high school and in the University of
Edinburgh, and in 1867 he entered the University of London. Hard study
broke down his health and he moved to Canada. Thence he moved to the
United States, becoming first a teacher of deaf mutes, and afterward
professor of vocal physiology in Boston University. In 1874, at the
suggestion of the Boston Board of Education, he began some experiments
to show to the eye the vibrations of sound, for the use of the deaf and
dumb. The results of these experiments convinced Bell that articulate
speech could be transmitted through space. Early in 1876 he completed
the first telephone. The same year he exhibited it at the Centennial
Exposition at Philadelphia, where it was pronounced the "wonder of
wonders."
He filed application for a patent on his invention at the Patent Office
in Washington, February 14, 1876. It is a singular fact that another
application for a patent on the telephone was received at the Patent
Office a few hours later on the same day from Elisha Gray, an
electrical inventor of Chicago. The patent was issued to Bell, not
because his invention was superior in merit to Gray's, but on the
ground that his application was received first. This is a case where
"the early bird catches the worm," for the profits arising from the
patent have made Mr. Bell very wealthy, and high honors have come to
him as the inventor of one of the world's greatest and most marvelous
inventions.
The Bell Telephone Company was organized in 1877, and in 1878 the first
telephone exchanges were constructed. By the following year the
telephone was firmly established as a social and commercial necessity.
It has grown with great rapidity. It is now found in every city of the
world; hotels, large buildings, and ships have their private exchanges,
and it has found its way recently into thousands of farmhouses.
Bell had to fight hard in the courts to sustain his patent. Suit after
suit was brought by rival claimants, attacking his right to the patent.
The litigation was bitter and protracted. One of the most noteworthy of
these suits was brought by a Pennsylvania mechanic named Drawbaugh. He
claimed that about 1872 he had made a working telephone out of a cigar
box, a glass tumbler, a tin can, and some other crude materials; and
that with the apparatus thus constructed he had talked over a wire
several hundred feet long. Many persons testified that they were
acquainted with Drawbaugh's apparatus, some of them having used it.
Some instruments, said to be the original ones which Drawbaugh had
constructed, were brought into court and exhibited. It was shown that
speech could be transmitted with them in a crude way. Drawbaugh claimed
that he was too poor at the time of making the apparatus to take out
the necessary patent. The Court decided in favor of Bell. Elisha Gray,
whose application for a patent had been received the same day that
Bell's was, also brought suit against Bell. Before making his
application, Gray had filed some preliminary papers looking forward to
a patent on the telephone. In his suit against Bell he charged that the
patent examiner had fraudulently and secretly conveyed to Bell the
contents of those papers. But Bell won this suit, and he finally
established over all rivals his legal title as the inventor of the
telephone.
Recently a wireless system of telephoning has been in process of
development, and it will not be strange if, within a few years, we
shall be talking through space without wires, so boundless seem the
possibilities of the age.