by Tom Wheeler
At the point on the line where the wire’s resistance had reduced the flow of electricity to almost nothing, Henry installed an electromagnet. Receiving just enough of the dying current to activate it, the electromagnet closed a new circuit connected to a new power source. The resulting new and powerful signal, a perfect clone of the original, then continued down the wire until it, too, weakened and was reamplified by the next relay.
Unlike Samuel Morse, Joseph Henry was an unassuming man of science. It was Henry’s belief that scientific advancements should be freely available for the betterment of mankind rather than the enrichment of one man. As a result, he did not patent any of his discoveries. Morse did not suffer from such selflessness; he incorporated Henry’s ideas without as much as a nod of recognition. When it came time for Morse to patent “his” ideas in 1840, the patent included the technology that Henry had selflessly declined to claim for himself.
In later years Joseph Henry—who went on to become the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the unofficial science adviser to President Lincoln—would dismiss Morse’s grandiose efforts to “claim for myself … the invention of a mode of communicating intelligence by electricity.”29 “I am not aware that Mr. Morse ever made a single original discovery in electricity, magnetism, or electromagnetism, applicable to the invention of the Telegraph,” the scientist would testify.30
Morse Goes to Washington
While Morse may not have been a paragon of virtue, he was without a doubt the hardest-pushing promoter of the still seemingly miraculous concept of an electronic means of leaping both time and space. What Morse lacked in scientific knowledge he more than made up for in bravura.
Morse took his telegraph on the road. In early January 1838 the Morristown, New Jersey, Jerseyman reported on a demonstration in that city; “Professor Morse’s Electromagnetic Telegraph,” the headline announced. The following month Morse and his colleague-cum-assistant, Alfred Vail, were in the nation’s capital to demonstrate their device.
The Committee on Commerce of the House of Representatives was the site of the telegraph’s grand unveiling. Morse and Vail rolled two five-mile spools of wire into the meeting room, and members of Congress came to view the demonstrations. President Martin Van Buren and cabinet members journeyed from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Morse asked Van Buren to whisper a message to be transmitted. Out the other end came “The enemy near.”31
At a time when electricity was a vague scientific concept (Edison’s light bulb wouldn’t appear until 1879), Morse’s demonstration of his telegraph was awe-inspiring.
“The world is coming to an end,” Vail reported one attendee asserting.32
“Time and space are now annihilated,” another visitor correctly observed.33
Such heartfelt sentiments from such powerful individuals, however, do not a revolution make. On April 6, 1838, the Commerce Committee reported a bill appropriating $30,000 for a fifty-mile trial of the technology it had witnessed. The committee’s report described the telegraph as “a revolution unsurpassed in moral grandeur by any discovery that has been made in the arts and sciences.”34
The bill went nowhere. The momentum Morse seemed to have generated with his February demonstrations dissipated as elected representatives came to grips with the political consequences back home of a large appropriation for a project beyond the comprehension of most of their constituents. It was a time of domestic austerity following the Panic of 1837. Casting one’s vote for what seemed a parlor trick was deemed to be a politically unhealthy act.
Once again, Morse’s drive for recognition caused him to behave questionably. Unbeknownst to the other members of Congress, the principal sponsor of the funding legislation was on the take from Morse. Between the February demonstration and the April committee report Morse had secretly given a one-quarter ownership position in his technology to Representative Francis O. J. Smith of Maine, the chairman of the Commerce Committee. Yet, even with such a powerful fixer, voting for the seemingly harebrained idea of messages by sparks was too politically risky for a majority of his colleagues.
It would be five years before Congress would again revisit the telegraph issue. During that period Morse traveled to Europe and was unsuccessful in acquiring foreign patents and attracting investors. In the process, he learned his “flash of genius” had occurred to others. The Wheatstone-Cooke team was ahead of Morse in the successful implementation of their invention. After successfully installing their telegraph for use by the Great Western Railway in England, the two were exploring bringing it to the other side of the Atlantic.
The unsuccessful European trip disheartened Morse and allowed other interests to take center-stage in his life. While pitching his ideas in Paris, he had met Louis Daguerre and had seen his early photographic technique. Returning home, Morse combined his artistic proclivities with the new process and set up a studio for what he called “photographic paintings.”35 He also ran and lost the 1841 race for mayor of New York on an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic platform.
Amazingly, Samuel Morse had yet to patent his telegraph ideas. He had received a “caveat” from the Patent Office in 1837—essentially a placeholder, establishing the claim’s priority in front of others, but lacking any specifics about the technology’s processes. It wasn’t until June 20, 1840, that patent no. 1647, “a new and useful Improvement in the mode of communicating information by signals, by the application of Electro Magnetism” was granted.36
Congressional infatuation with message signaling stirred again in 1841. The recent congressional elections had given the Whigs and their platform of governmental promotion of internal improvements a majority in both houses. Once again, optical signaling was under consideration. Sitting atop the Capitol building (which was then without its current dome) was a semaphore, part of a trial optical system Congress was considering funding. Morse hired a lobbyist, Isaac Cohen, to advocate on behalf of an electric telegraph. Cohen failed.37
When the third session of the Twenty-Seventh Congress returned in December 1842 for a final three-month meeting, Samuel Morse was present as his own lobbyist. His illicit partner, Representative Smith, was gone, however; he had not stood for reelection. In his place Morse found a new (and legitimate) ally in Representative Charles Ferris of New York City, a member of the Commerce Committee.
A telegraph line was built from the House Commerce Committee room to the Senate Naval Affairs Committee room. Once again, Morse gave demonstrations to any and all. Not everyone was awestruck. “I watched his countenance closely, to see if he was not deranged,” wrote Indiana senator O. H. Smith, “and I was assured by other Senators after we left the room that they had no confidence in it.”38
Morse was desperate and broke. At one point toward the end of his time in Washington, Morse calculated that after buying a train ticket home to New York, he would have thirty-seven and a half cents to his name.39
Finally, on December 30, 1842, the Commerce Committee reported Representative Ferris’s bill (H.R. 641) to the full House. Attesting to the interest in the topic, the House ordered 5,000 copies of the committee’s report printed.40 The representatives were undoubtedly anticipating the need for something to explain the seemingly wild idea to their constituents.
First, however, the idea of messages by lightning had to survive the doubters in Congress. On February 21, 1843, the full House of Representatives considered the recommendation of its Commerce Committee that $30,000 be appropriated to “test the Practicality of establishing a System of Electro-Magnetic Telegraphs by the United States.”41 The debate turned into a carnival.
Representative Cave Johnson of Tennessee was the ringleader of the opposition. He “raved and scolded, and ranted, and screamed, and foamed against the House, like a demonically possessed man,” one newspaper reported.42 Johnson even moved to amend the bill to appropriate half the funds to study sending messages by mesmerism (hypnotism). Members’ laughter and witty ripostes carried throughout the chamber. As Morse sat in t
he gallery, a witness to the mockery, one congressman objected to the folderol and requested that the mesmerism amendment be ruled out of order. Joining in the levity, the presiding officer ruled, to more laughter, that absent “a scientific analysis to determine how far the magnetism of Mesmerism was analogous to that employed in telegraphs,” the amendment was in order. After the representatives had their fun, the amendment was defeated, but not before garnering twenty-two votes.43
Ultimately, two days later on February 23, the House of Representatives passed the appropriation by the razor-thin margin of 89 ayes to 83 nays. Seventy congressmen chose to abstain rather than have to make a decision one way or another.44
Passage by the House was a victory, but time was running out. There were only eight days remaining before the end of the Twenty-Seventh Congress. Morse turned his attention to the Senate. On March 3, the last day of the session, Samuel Morse despondently watched from the gallery as the Senate moved through its agenda. His allies on the floor had told him not to be too hopeful. With the carnival atmosphere of the House’s debate just a few days past, one could only imagine what could happen on the Senate floor; any delay at this late hour would be fatal.
A miracle of miracles occurred, however; as the Senate droned on late into the night, the appropriation was finally raised. The official record of the action is terse and without the mischievousness of the House: “The House bill making appropriations to test the plan for electro-magnetic telegrams, was read the third time, and passed.”45 There was no dissent. That evening President Tyler signed the bill into law.
Mr. Morse would have his telegraph.
But Will It Work?
The $30,000 appropriated by Congress equates to approximately $1 million today.46 Anointing himself with the grandiose title of superintendent of the electro-magnetic telegraph, Morse drew funds from the secretary of the treasury and prepared to begin construction. Achieving his position with no scientific expertise, Morse clearly expected he could oversee a complex construction project with no management expertise either. The absence of both skills would become manifest.
Construction began three weeks later than planned, on October 21, 1843, at the Baltimore end of the line. The fifteen-year-old Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad consented to allow the wires to follow its right-of-way to Washington.47 Fearful of vandalism, and bowing to his chauvinistic beliefs in evildoers from abroad, Morse decided to bury the wires inside flexible lead tubes that were specially made for the purpose. To oversee construction Morse appointed his patent partner, former representative F. O. J. “Fog” Smith, to procure the conduit and wire as well as to contract for its trenching. Smith promptly gave the trenching contract to his brother-in-law, who in turn subcontracted it to a plow salesman named Ezra Cornell.
Once outside the grounds of the Baltimore rail depot Cornell’s specially designed trenching apparatus went to work. As a team of eight mules pulled, the plowshare bit into the earth to create a narrow slit. A spool of lead tubing containing insulated wire mounted atop the plow fed into the trench behind the blade. As the plow progressed the walls of the trench collapsed to cover the wire.48
After advancing about ten miles Morse’s construction began to collapse like the walls of Cornell’s trench. The buried tubing was leaking. Morse turned to a new tubing supplier, but its product was defective as well. It was December and winter was setting in.
Morse had planned to have his project completed by the time Congress reconvened in December. Instead, December found him stuck about ten miles outside of Baltimore at Relay, Maryland. Worst of all, the part of the trial that had been built failed because the leaks in the conduit grounded out the signal.
It wasn’t just technical problems that plagued Superintendent Morse. His erstwhile partner Fog Smith continued in the less-than-reputable behavior he had demonstrated in Congress. The supplier for the second batch of lead tubing charged $1,172 less than what was budgeted compared with the pricing of the earlier supplier. True to his ethical fluidity, Smith proposed that they not share this information with their government funders and that he and Morse quietly split the savings between them.49 When Morse refused, relations between the two soured.50
Morse may not have been willing to engage in larceny, but a little deception was acceptable. He was regularly reporting to the treasury secretary as he drew new funds. At the same time, the newspapers covered his progress. Word could not leak out that thus far the project was a failure. Morse needed a plausible excuse to stop work and reassess the situation.
Ezra Cornell, who knew of the technical difficulties, provided the cover story. He proposed to Morse that his trenching tool have an accident. With Cornell driving, the device unexpectedly steered into a large rock, and the blade broke into pieces.51 Morse announced the project would go into winter quarters, which would give him time to repair the trenching tool and test the line that had been laid thus far.
Those winter quarters were in Washington. Morse took up residence in the home of an old school chum, Commissioner of Patents Henry Ellsworth. The commissioner also gave him a room in the basement of the Patent Office to store his materials. During the winter hiatus Morse’s faithful assistant Alfred Vail and Ezra Cornell hit the books. Unlike their boss, they determined to accept that Morse had not had an isolated flash of genius, and to strive to learn from the experiences of others. Vail discovered an English publication reporting how Wheatstone and Cooke had also had trouble with buried wires and had ultimately opted to suspend the lines above ground. Vail, once again playing a determinative role in the success Morse would claim for himself, convinced Morse that aerial construction was the only alternative.
The project was nearly broke. By December, Superintendent Morse had spent $23,000 of the $30,000 the Congress had appropriated. All he had to show for it was a ten-mile stretch of wire that didn’t work. Vail wrote to his wife, “I should not at all wonder if the appropriation is exhausted before we are able to do a thing.”52 Down in the basement of the Patent Office, Morse’s team spent the winter tediously reclaiming the wire from the spools of lead tubes, unwrapping its insulation and repurposing it to be hung from poles. To replenish his dwindling accounts Morse sold the lead tubing as scrap.
Vail may have discovered that Wheatstone and Cooke suspended their wire, but there remained the problem of how to keep the line from grounding out when it came in contact with the pole. The inspiration came from the glass knobs on the dresser in Ezra Cornell’s hotel room. Because glass does not conduct electricity, anchoring the wire to glass insulated the current. The ultimate solution, glass insulators, bore an uncanny resemblance to their furniture counterpart.53
If the technical problems weren’t sufficient to provoke ire, the decision to cease trenching enraged Fog Smith. Unbeknownst to Morse, Smith had bought a half interest in Cornell’s trencher. Not only was his brother-in-law no longer needed for the trenching, Smith’s dream of riches from licensing Cornell’s device to future telegraph companies was destroyed. Smith’s relations with Morse, already tense, broke into open warfare. Morse began to communicate with his partner only in writing.54
Nevertheless, in mid-March 1844, the Morse team began boring holes approximately every 200 feet along the B&O line. Into these holes went thirty-foot poles with the bark still on them, with a crossarm atop the poles that carried the wires. When the wire came to the crossarm it was wrapped in gum-shellac-coated cotton and fitted between glass insulators.
After the line had progressed seven miles (this time with Washington as the starting point), Morse ran some tests. It worked! Every day the line was extended and then tested. Every day set a new American record for the longest transmission over an operational telegraph line.
By May 1 the line was halfway to Baltimore, where the Whig party was meeting to select its presidential candidate. Washington waited with bated breath for the first train from Baltimore carrying the news of the convention’s decision. Ever the showman, Morse saw a promotional opportunity. He had Vail meet
the Washington-bound train at Annapolis Junction, the furthest point of the telegraph line. Learning the results of the convention from those aboard the train, Vail immediately telegraphed the news to Morse in the capital. By the time the train reached Washington an hour and a quarter later, the news had already spread throughout the town that Henry Clay and Theodore Frelinghuysen were the Whig nominees.
Amid all the trials and travails of his project, Samuel Morse fell in love. The fifty-three-year-old Morse was smitten with Anne Ellsworth, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Patent Commissioner Ellsworth, with whom he was lodging. “I desire sincere love to dear Annie,” he had written her father in February. Alfred Vail feared Morse’s preoccupation with romance was interfering with his project. “The secret is,” Vail wrote his brother, “[Morse is] so much in love he doesn’t know what he is about half the time.”55
The romance appears to have been one-sided, but it produced one of the most memorable lines in history. Morse asked Anne to suggest the text for the first official transmission over the completed telegraph line. She chose a selection from the Bible, Numbers 23:23, “What hath God wrought!”
On May 24, 1844, Samuel Finley Breese Morse sat in the Supreme Court chamber on the east side of the Capitol building and tapped out Anne Ellsworth’s phrase to Alfred Vail forty miles away in Baltimore. Vail then sent a confirming message back to the Capitol.
At both ends the message was recorded as dots and dashes on a piece of moving paper tape. Once again, Alfred Vail had introduced an integral innovation for which Morse would be given credit. In place of the crude port-rule and its saw-toothed parts that Morse had designed, Vail introduced the telegraph key. At the other end, where Morse had envisioned a cumbersome register using a suspended electromagnet pendulum, Vail devised a machine that embossed the dots and dashes on a paper tape.
