When we consider the youth and immaturity of America in the first half of the nineteenth century, it seems the more remarkable that the honor of making the first great practical application of electricity should have been reserved for an American. With the exception of the isolated work of Franklin, the development of the new science of electrical learning was the work of Europeans. This was natural, for it was Europe which was possessed of the accumulated wealth and learning which are usually attained only by older civilizations. Yet, with all these advantages, electricity remained largely a scientific plaything. It was an American who fully recognized the possibilities of this new force as a servant of man, and who was possessed of the practical genius and the business ability to devise and introduce a thoroughly workable system of rapid and certain communication.

We have seen that Wheatstone was early trained as a musician. Samuel Morse began life as an artist. But while Wheatstone early indicated his lack of interest in music and devoted himself to scientific studies while yet a youth, Morse's artistic career was of his own choosing, and he devoted himself to it for many years. This explains the fact that Wheatstone attained much scientific success before Morse, though he was eleven years his junior.

It was in 1791 that Samuel Morse was born. Samuel Finley Breese Morse was the entire name with which he was endowed by his parents. He came from the sturdiest of Puritan stock, his father being of English and his mother of Scotch descent. His father was an eminent divine, and also notable as a geographer, being the author of the first American geography of importance. His mother also was possessed of unusual talent and force. It is interesting to note that Samuel Morse first saw the light in Charlestown, Massachusetts, at the foot of Breed's Hill, but little more than a mile from the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin. He came into the world about a year after Franklin died. It is interesting to believe that some of the practical talent of America's first great electrician in some way descended to Samuel Morse.

He received an unusual education. At the age of seven he was sent to a school at Andover, Massachusetts, to prepare him for Phillips Academy. At the academy he was prepared for Yale College, which he entered when fifteen years of age. With the knowledge of science so small at the time, collegiate instruction in such subjects was naturally meager in the extreme. Jeremiah Day was then professor of natural philosophy at Yale, and was probably America's ablest teacher of the subject. His lectures upon electricity and the experiments with which he illustrated them aroused the interest of Morse, as we learn from the letters he wrote to his parents at this time.

One principle in particular impressed Morse. This was that "if the electric circuit be interrupted at any place the fluid will become visible, and when it passes it will leave an impression upon any intermediate body." Thus was it stated in the text-book in use at Yale at that time. More than a score of years after the telegraph had been achieved Morse wrote:

The fact that the presence of electricity can be made visible in any desired part of the circuit was the crude seed which took root in my mind, and grew into form, and ripened into the invention of the telegraph.

We shall later hear of the occasion which recalled this bit of information to Morse's mind.

But though Yale College was at that time a center of scientific activity, and Morse showed more than a little interest in electricity and chemistry, his major interest remained art. He eagerly looked forward to graduation that he might devote his entire time to the study of painting. It is significant of the tolerance and breadth of vision of his parents that they apparently put no bars in the path of this ambition, though they had sacrificed to give him the best of collegiate trainings that he might fit himself for the ministry, medicine, or the law. As a boy of fifteen Samuel Morse had painted water-colors that attracted attention, and he was possessed of enough talent to paint miniatures while at Yale which were salable at five dollars apiece, and so aided in defraying his college expenses.

After his graduation from Yale in 1810, Morse devoted himself entirely to the study of art, still being dependent upon his parents for support. He secured the friendship and became the pupil of Washington Allston, then a foremost American painter. In the summer of 1811 Allston sailed for England, and Morse accompanied him. In London he came to the attention of Benjamin West, then at the height of his career, and benefited by his advice and encouragement.

That he had no ambition other than his art at this period we may learn from a letter he wrote to his mother in 1812.

My passion for my art [he wrote] is so firmly rooted that I am confident no human power could destroy it. The more I study the greater I think is its claim to the appellation divine. I am now going to begin a picture of the death of Hercules, the figure to be large as life.

When he had completed this picture to his own satisfaction, he showed it to West. "Go on and finish it," was West's comment. "But it is finished," said Morse. "No, no. See here, and here, and here are places you can improve it." Morse went to work upon his painting again, only to meet the same comment when he again showed it to West. This happened again and again. When the youth had finally brought it to a point where West was convinced it was the very best Morse could do he had learned a lesson in thoroughness and painstaking attention to detail that he never forgot.

That he might have a model for his painting Morse had molded a figure of Hercules in clay. At the advice of West he entered the cast in a competition for a prize in sculpture, with the result that he received the prize and a gold medal for his work. He then plunged into the competition for a prize and medal offered by the Royal Academy for the best historical painting. His subject was, "The Judgment of Jupiter in the Case of Apollo, Marpessa, and Idas." Though he completed the picture to the satisfaction of West, Morse was not able to remain in London and enter it in the competition. The rules required that the artist be present in person if he was to receive the prize, but Morse was forced to return to America. He had been in England for four years-a year longer than had originally been planned for him-and he was out of funds, and his parents could support him no longer.

Morse lived in London during the War of 1812, but seems to have suffered no annoyance other than that of poverty, which the war intensified by raising the prices of food as well as his necessary artist's materials to an almost prohibitive figure. The last of the Napoleonic wars was also in progress. News of the battle of Waterloo reached London but a short time before Morse sailed for America. It required two days for the news to reach the English capital. The young American, whose inability to sell his paintings was driving him from London, was destined to devise a system which would have carried the great news to its destination within a few seconds.

But while he gained fame in America and secured praise and attention as he had in London, he found art no more profitable. He contrived to eke out an existence by painting an occasional portrait, going from town to town in New England for this purpose. He turned from art to invention for a time, joining with his brother in devising a fire-engine pump of an improved pattern. They secured a patent upon it, but could not sell it. He turned again to the life of a wandering painter of portraits. In 1818 he went to Charleston, South Carolina, at the invitation of his uncle. His portraits proved very popular and he was soon occupied with work at good prices. This prosperity enabled him to take unto himself a wife, and the same year he married Lucretia Walker, of Concord, New Hampshire.

After four years in the South Morse returned to the North, hoping that larger opportunities would now be ready for him. The result was again failure. He devoted his time to huge historical paintings, and the public would neither buy them nor pay to see them when they were exhibited. Another blow fell upon him in 1825 when his wife died. At last he began to secure more sitters for his portraits, though his larger works still failed. He assisted in the organization of the National Academy of Design and became its first president. In 1829 he again sailed for Europe to spend three years in study in the galleries of Paris and Rome. Still he failed to attain any real success in his chosen work. He had made many friends and done much worthy work, yet there is little probability that he would have attained lasting fame as an artist even though his energies had not been turned to other interests.

It was on the packet ship Sully, crossing the Atlantic from France, that Morse conceived the telegraph which was to prove the first great practical application of electricity. One noon as the passengers were gathered about the luncheon-table, a Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, exhibited an electro-magnet he had secured in Europe, and described certain electrical experiments he had seen while in Paris. He was asked concerning the speed of electricity through a wire, and replied that, according to Faraday, it was practically instantaneous. The discussion recalled to Morse his own collegiate studies in electricity, and he remarked that if the circuit were interrupted the current became visible, and that it occurred to him that these flashes might be used as a means of communication. The idea of using the current to carry messages became fixed in his mind, and he pondered, over it during the remaining weeks of the long, slow voyage.

Doctor Jackson claimed, after Morse had perfected and established his telegraph, that the idea had been his own, and that Morse had secured it from him on board the Sully. But Doctor Jackson was not a practical man who either could or did put any ideas he may have had to practical use. At the most he seems to have simply started Morse's mind along a new train of thought. The idea of using the current as a carrier of messages, though it was new to Morse, had occurred to others earlier, as we have seen. But at the very outset Morse set himself to find a means by which he might make the current not only signal the message, but actually record it. Before he landed from the Sully he had worked out sketches of a printing telegraph. In this the current actuated an electro-magnet on the end of which was a rod. This rod was to mark down dots and dashes on a moving tape of paper.

Thus was the idea born. Of course the telegraph was still far from an accomplished fact. Without the improved electro-magnets and the relay of Professor Henry, Morse had not yet even the basic ideas upon which a telegraph to operate over considerable distances could be constructed. But Morse was possessed of Yankee imagination and practical ability. He was possessed of a fair technical education for that day, and he eagerly set himself to attaining the means to accomplish his end. That he realized just what he sought is shown by his remark to the captain of the Sully when he landed at New York. "Well, Captain," he remarked, "should you hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship Sully."

With the notion of using an electro-magnet as a receiver, an alphabet consisting of dots and dashes, and a complete faith in the practical possibilities of the whole, Morse went to work in deadly earnest. But poverty still beset him and it was necessary for him to devote most of his time to his paintings, that he might have food, shelter, and the means to buy materials with which to experiment. From 1832 to 1835 he was able to make but small progress. In the latter year he secured an appointment as professor of the literature of the arts of design in the newly established University of the City of New York. He soon had his crude apparatus set up in a room at the college and in 1835 was able to transmit messages. He now had a little more leisure and a little more money, but his opportunities were still far from what he would have desired. The principal aid which came to him at the university was from Professor Gale, a teacher of chemistry. Gale became greatly interested in Morse's apparatus, and was able to give him much practical assistance, becoming a partner in the enterprise. Morse knew little of the work of other experimenters in the field of electricity and Gale was able to tell Morse what had been learned by others. Particularly he brought to Morse's attention the discoveries of another American, Prof. Joseph Henry.

The electro-magnet which actuated the receiving instrument in the crude set in use by Morse in 1835 had but a few turns of thick wire. Professor Henry, by his experiments five years earlier, had demonstrated that many turns of small wire made the electro-magnet far more sensitive. Morse made this improvement in his own apparatus. In 1832 Henry had devised a telegraph very similar to that of Morse by which he signaled through a mile of wire. His receiving apparatus was an electro-magnet, the armature of which struck a bell. Thus the messages were read by sound, instead of being recorded on a moving strip of paper as by Morse's system. While Henry was possibly the ablest of American electricians at that time, he devoted himself entirely to science and made no effort to put his devices to practical use. Neither did he endeavor to profit by his inventions, for he secured no patents upon them.

Professor Henry realized, in common with Morse and others, that if the current were to be conducted over long wires for considerable distances it would become so weak that it would not operate a receiver. Henry avoided this difficulty by the invention of what is known as the relay. At a distance where the current has become weak because of the resistance of the wire and losses due to faulty insulation, it will still operate a delicate electro-magnet with a very light armature so arranged as to open and close a local circuit provided with suitable batteries. Thus the recording instrument may be placed on the local circuit and as the local circuit an opened and closed in unison with the main circuit, the receiver can be operated. It was the relay which made it possible to extend telegraph lines to a considerable distance. It is not altogether clear whether Morse adopted Henry's relay or devised it for himself. It is believed, however, that Professor Henry explained the relay to Professor Gale, who in turn placed it before his partner, Morse.

By 1837 Morse had completed a model, had improved his apparatus, had secured stronger batteries and longer wires, and mastered the use of the relay. It was in this year that the House of Representatives ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to investigate the feasibility of establishing a system of telegraphs. This action urged Morse to complete his apparatus and place it before the Government. He was still handicapped by lack of money, lack of scientific knowledge, and the difficulty of securing necessary materials and devices. To-day the experimenter may buy wire, springs, insulators, batteries, and almost anything that might be useful. Morse, with scanty funds and limited time, had to search for his materials and puzzle out the way to make each part for himself with such crude tools as he had available. Need we wonder that his progress was slow? Instead we should wonder that, despite all discouragements and handicaps, he clung to his great idea and labored on.

But assistance was to come to him in this same eventful year of 1837, and that quite unexpectedly. On a Saturday in September a young man named Alfred Vail wandered into Professor Gale's laboratory. Morse was there engaged in exhibiting his model to an English professor then visiting in New York. The youth was deeply impressed with what he saw. He realized that here were possibilities of an instrument that would be of untold service to mankind. Asking Professor Morse whether he intended to experiment with a longer line, he was informed that such was his intention as soon as he could secure the means. Young Vail replied that he thought he could secure the money if Morse would admit him as a partner. To this Morse assented.

Vail plunged into the enterprise with all the enthusiasm of youth. That very evening he studied over the commercial possibilities, and before he retired had marked out on the maps in his atlas the routes for the most needed lines of communication. The young man applied to his father for support. The senior Vail was the head of the Speedwell Iron Works at Morristown, New Jersey, and was a man of unusual enterprise and ability. He determined to back his son in the enterprise, and Morse was invited to come and exhibit his model. Two thousand dollars was needed to make the necessary instruments and secure the patents. On September 23, 1837, the agreement was drawn up by the terms of which Alfred Vail was, at his own expense, to construct apparatus suitable for exhibition to Congress and to secure a patent. In return he was to receive a one-fourth interest. Very shortly afterward they filed a caveat in the Patent Office, which is a notice serving to protect an impending invention.

Alfred Vail immediately set to work on the apparatus, his only helper being a fifteen-year-old apprentice boy named William Baxter. The two worked early and late for many months in a secret room in the iron-works, being forced to fashion every part for themselves. The first machine was a copy of Morse's model, but Vail's native ability as a mechanic and his own ingenuity enabled him to make many improvements. The pencil fastened to the armature which had marked zigzag lines on the moving paper was replaced by a fountain-pen which inscribed long and short lines, and thus the dashes and dots of the Morse code were put into their present form. Morse had worked out an elaborate telegraphic code or dictionary, but a simpler code by which combinations of dots and dashes were used to represent letters instead of numbers in a code was now devised. Vail recognized the importance of having the simplest combinations of dots and dashes stand for the most used letters, as this would increase the speed of sending. He began to figure out for himself the frequency with which the various letters occur in the English language. Then he thought of the combination of types in a type-case, and, going to a local newspaper office, found the result all worked out for him. In each case of type such common letters as e and t have many more types than little used letters such as q and z. By observing the number of types of each letter provided, Vail was enabled to arrange them in the order of their importance in assigning them symbols in the code. Thus the Morse code was arranged as it stands to-day. Alfred Vail played a very important part in the arrangement of the code as well as in the construction of the apparatus, and there are many who believe that the code should have been called the Vail code instead of the Morse code.

[Illustration: MORSE'S FIRST TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENT

A pen was attached to the pendulum and drawn across the strip of paper by the action of the electro-magnet. The lead type shown in the lower right-hand corner was used in making electrical contact when sending a message. The modern instrument shown in the lower left-hand corner is the one that sent a message around the world in 1896.]

Morse came down to Speedwell when he could to assist Vail with the work, and yet it progressed slowly. But at last, early in January of 1838 they had the telegraph at work, and William Baxter, the apprentice boy, was sent to call the senior Vail. Within a few moments he was in the work-room studying the apparatus. Alfred Vail was at the sending key, and Morse was at the receiver. The father wrote on a piece of paper these words: "A patient waiter is no loser." Handing it to his son, he stated that if he could transmit the message to Morse by the telegraph he would be convinced. The message was sent and recorded and instantly read by Morse. The first test had been completed successfully.

Chapter 5 THE ACHIEVEMENT OF MORSE

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