Part 5 (1/2)
In 1829 Morse made a second visit to Europe, where he was warmly welcomed and honored by the Royal Academy. During three years or more he lived in continental cities, studying the Louvre in Paris and making of the famous gallery an exhibition picture which contained about fifty miniatures of the works in that collection. In November, 1832, he was back again in New York, with high hopes as to his future. Allston, writing to Dunlap in 1834, said: ”I rejoice to hear your report of Morse's advance in his art. I know what is in him perhaps better than anyone else. If he will only bring out all that is there he will show parts that many now do not dream of.”
For several years the thoughts of the artist Morse had been busy with a matter wholly outside of his chosen domain. Some lectures on electro-magnetism by his intimate friend, Judge Freeman Dana, given at the Athenaeum while Morse was also lecturing there on the fine arts, had greatly interested him in the subject, and he learned much in conversation with Dana. While on his second visit to Europe Morse made himself acquainted with the labors of scientific men in their endeavors to communicate intelligence between far-distant places by means of electro-magnetism, and he saw an electro-magnet signalling instrument in operation. He knew that so early as 1649 a Jesuit priest had prophesied an electric telegraph, and that for half a century or more students had partially succeeded in attempts of this kind. But no practical telegraph had yet been invented. In 1774 Le Sage made an electro-signalling instrument with twenty-four wires, one for each letter of the alphabet.
In 1825 Sturgeon invented an electro-magnet. In 1830 Professor Henry increased the magnetic force that Morse afterward used.
On board the s.h.i.+p Sully, in which Morse sailed from Havre to New York, in the autumn of 1832, the recent discovery in France of the means of obtaining an electric spark from a magnet was a favorite topic of conversation among the pa.s.sengers, and it was during the voyage that Morse conceived the idea of an electro-magnetic and chemical recording telegraph. Before he reached New York he had made drawings and specifications of his conception, which he exhibited to his fellow pa.s.sengers. Few great inventions that have made their authors immortal were so completely grasped at inception as this. Morse was accustomed to keep small note-books in which to make records of his work, and scores of these books are still in existence. As he sat upon the deck of the Sully, one night after dinner, he drew from his pocket one of these books and began to make marks, to represent letters and figures to be produced by electricity at a distance. The mechanism by which the results were to be reached was wrought out by slow and laborious thought, but the vision as a whole was clear. The current of electricity pa.s.sed instantaneously to any distance along a wire, but the current being interrupted, a spark appeared. This spark represented one sign; its absence another; the time of its absence still another. Here are three signs to be combined into the representation of figures or letters. They can be made to form an alphabet. Words may thus be indicated. A telegraph, an instrument to record at a distance, will result. Continents shall be crossed. This great and wide sea shall be no barrier. ”If it will go ten miles without stopping,” he said, ”I can make it go around the globe.”
He worked incessantly all that next day and could not sleep at night in his berth. In a few days he submitted some rough drafts of his invention to William C. Rives, of Virginia, who was returning from Paris, where he had been minister of the United States. Mr. Rives suggested various difficulties, over which Morse spent several sleepless nights, announcing in the morning at breakfast-table the new devices by which he proposed to accomplish the task before him. He exhibited a drawing of the instrument which he said would do the work, and so completely had he mastered all the details that five years afterward, when a model of this instrument was constructed, it was instantly recognized as the one he had devised and drawn in his sketch-book and exhibited to his fellow pa.s.sengers on the s.h.i.+p. In view of subsequent claims made by a fellow pa.s.senger to the honor of having suggested the telegraph, these details are interesting and important.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The First Telegraphic Instrument, as Exhibited in 1837 by Morse.]
Circ.u.mstances delayed the construction of a recording telegraph by Morse, but the subject slumbered in his mind. During his absence abroad he had been elected professor of the literature of the arts of design, in the University of the City of New York, and this work occupied his attention for some time. Three years afterward, in November, 1835, he completed a rude telegraph instrument--the first recording apparatus; but it embodied the mechanical principle now in use the world over. His whole plan was not completed until July, 1837, when by means of two instruments he was able to communicate from as well as to a distant point. In September hundreds of people saw the new instrument in operation at the university, most of whom looked upon it as a scientific toy constructed by an unfortunate dreamer. The following year the invention was sufficiently perfected to enable Morse to direct the attention of Congress to it and ask its aid in the construction of an experimental line between Was.h.i.+ngton and Baltimore.
Late in the long session of 1838 he appeared before that body with his instrument. Before leaving New York with it he had invited a few friends to see it work. Now began in the life of Morse a period of years during which his whole time was devoted to convincing the world, first, that his electric telegraph would really communicate messages, and, secondly, that if it worked at all, it was of great practical value. Strange to say that this required any argument at all. But that in those days it did may be inferred from the fact that Morse could then find no help far or near. His invention was regarded as interesting, but of no importance either scientifically or commercially. In Was.h.i.+ngton, where he first went, he found so little encouragement that he went to Europe with the hope of drawing the attention of foreign governments to the advantages, and of securing patents for the invention; he had filed a caveat at the Patent Office in this country. His mission was a failure. England refused him a patent, and France gave him only a useless paper which a.s.sured for him no special privileges. He returned home disappointed but not discouraged, and waited four years longer before he again attempted to interest Congress in his invention.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Modern Morse Telegraph.]
This extraordinary struggle lasted twelve years, during which, with his mind absorbed in one idea and yet almost wholly dependent for bread upon his profession as an artist, it was impossible to pursue art with the enthusiasm and industry essential to success. His situation was forlorn in the extreme. The father of three little children, now motherless, his pecuniary means exhausted by his residence in Europe, and unable to pursue art without sacrificing his invention, he was at his wits' ends.
He had visions of usefulness by the invention of a telegraph that should bring the continents of the earth into intercourse. He was poor and knew that wealth as well as fame was within his reach. He had long received a.s.sistance from his father and brothers when his profession did not supply the needed means of support for himself and family; but it seemed like robbery to take the money of others for experiments, the success of which he could not expect them to believe in until he could give practical evidence that the instrument would do the work proposed. It was the old story of genius contending with poverty. His brothers comforted, encouraged, and cheered him. In the house of his brother Richard he found a home and the tender care that he required. Sidney, the other brother, also helped him. On the corner of Na.s.sau and Beekman Streets, now the site of the handsome Morse Building, his brothers erected a building where were the offices of the newspaper of which they were the editors and proprietors. In the fifth story of this building a room was a.s.signed to him which was for several years his studio, bedroom, parlor, kitchen, and workshop. On one side of the room stood a little cot on which he slept in the brief hours which he allowed himself for repose. On the other side stood his lathe with which the inventor turned the bra.s.s apparatus necessary in the construction of his instruments. He had, with his own hands, first whittled the model; then he made the moulds for the castings. Here were brought to him, day by day, crackers and the simplest food, by which, with tea prepared by himself, he sustained life while he toiled incessantly to give being to the idea that possessed him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Morse Making his own Instrument.
(From Prime's Life of Morse.)]
Before leaving for Europe he had suffered a great disappointment as an artist. The government had offered to American artists, to be selected by a committee of Congress, commissions to paint pictures for the panels in the rotunda of the Capitol. Morse was anxious to be employed upon one or more of them. He was the president of the National Academy of Design, and there was an eminent fitness in calling him to this national work.
Allston urged the appointment of Morse. John Quincy Adams, then a member of the House and on the committee to whom this subject was referred, submitted a resolution in the House that foreign artists be allowed to compete for these commissions, and in support alleged that there were no American artists competent to execute the paintings. This gave great and just offence to the artists and the public. A severe reply to Adams appeared in the New York _Evening Post_. It was written by James Fenimore Cooper, but it was attributed to Morse, whose pen was well known to be skillful, and in consequence his name was rejected by the committee. He never recovered fully from the effects of that blow.
Forty years afterward he could not speak of it without emotion. He had consecrated years of his life to the preparation for just such work.
It was well for him and for his country and the world that the artist in Morse was disappointed. From painter he became inventor, and from that time until the world acknowledged the greatness and importance of his invention he turned not back. His appointment as professor in the City University ent.i.tled him to certain rooms in the University Building looking out upon Was.h.i.+ngton Square, and here the first working models of the telegraph were brought into existence.
”There,” he says, ”I immediately commenced, with very limited means, to experiment upon my invention. My first instrument was made up of an old picture or canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old wooden clock, moved by a weight to carry the paper forward; three wooden drums, upon one of which the paper was wound and pa.s.sed over the other two; a wooden pendulum suspended to the top piece of the picture or stretching frame and vibrating across the paper as it pa.s.ses over the centre wooden drum; a pencil at the lower end of the pendulum, in contact with the paper; an electro-magnet fastened to a shelf across the picture or stretching frame, opposite to an armature made fast to the pendulum; a type rule and type for breaking the circuit, resting on an endless band, composed of carpet-binding, which pa.s.sed over two wooden rollers moved by a wooden crank.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Train Telegraph--the message transmitted by induction from the moving train to the single wire.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Interior of a Car on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, showing the Method of Operating the Train Telegraph.]
”Up to the autumn of 1837 my telegraphic apparatus existed in so rude a form that I felt a reluctance to have it seen. My means were very limited--so limited as to preclude the possibility of constructing an apparatus of such mechanical finish as to warrant my success in venturing upon its public exhibition. I had no wish to expose to ridicule the representative of so many hours of laborious thought. Prior to the summer of 1837, at which time Mr. Alfred Vail's attention became attracted to my telegraph, I depended upon my pencil for subsistence.
Indeed, so straitened were my circ.u.mstances that, in order to save time to carry out my invention and to economize my scanty means, I had for many months lodged and eaten in my studio, procuring my food in small quant.i.ties from some grocery and preparing it myself. To conceal from my friends the stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit of bringing my food to my room in the evenings, and this was my mode of life for many years.”
Before the telegraph was actually tried and practised the c.u.mbersome piano-key board devised by Morse in his first experiments was done away with and the simple device of a single key, with which we are all familiar, was adopted. Meantime Morse was practically abandoning art.
His friends among the profession had subscribed $3,000 in order to enable him to paint the picture he had in mind when he applied for the government work at Was.h.i.+ngton, ”The Signing of the First Compact on Board the Mayflower,” and he undertook the commission in 1838, only to give it up in 1841 and to return to the subscribers the amount paid with interest.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Diagram showing the Method of Telegraphing from a Moving Train by Induction.]
While Morse had been in Paris, in 1839, he had heard of Daguerre, who had discovered the method of fixing the image of the camera, which feat was then creating a great sensation among scientific men. Professor Morse was anxious to see the results of this discovery before leaving Paris, and the American consul, Robert Walsh, arranged an interview between the two inventors. Daguerre promised to send to Morse a copy of the descriptive publication which he intended to make so soon as a pension he expected from the French Government for the disclosure of his discovery should be secured. He kept his promise, and Morse was probably the first recipient of the pamphlet in this country. From the drawings it contained he constructed the first photographic apparatus made in the United States, and from a back window in the University Building he obtained a good representation of the tower of the Church of the Messiah on Broadway. This possesses an historical interest as being the first photograph in America. It was on a plate the size of a playing-card.
With Professor J.W. Draper, in a studio built on the roof of the University, he succeeded in taking likenesses of the living human face.
His subjects were compelled to sit fifteen minutes in the bright sunlight, with their eyes closed, of course. Professor Draper shortened the process and was the first to take portraits with the eyes open.
At the session of Congress of 1842-1843 Morse again appeared with his telegraph, and on February 21, 1843, John P. Kennedy, of Maryland, moved that a bill appropriating $30,000, to be expended, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, in a series of experiments for testing the merits of the telegraph, should be considered. The proposal met with ridicule. Johnson, of Tennessee, moved, as an amendment, that one-half should be given to a lecturer on mesmerism, then in Was.h.i.+ngton, to try mesmeric experiments under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury; and Mr. Houston said that Millerism ought to be included in the benefits of the appropriation. After the indulgence of much cheap wit, Mr. Mason, of Ohio, protested against such frivolity as injurious to the character of the House and asked the chair to rule the amendments out of order. The chair (John White, of Kentucky) ruled the amendments in order because ”it would require a scientific a.n.a.lysis to determine how far the magnetism of the mesmerism was a.n.a.logous to that to be employed in telegraphy.” This wit was applauded by peals of laughter, but the amendment was voted down and the bill pa.s.sed the House on February 23d by the close vote of 89 to 83. In the Senate the bill met with neither sneers nor opposition, but its progress was discouragingly slow. At twilight on the last evening of the session (March 3, 1842) there were one hundred and nineteen bills before it. It seemed impossible for it to be reached in regular course before the hour of adjournment should arrive, and Morse, who had anxiously watched the dreary course of business all day from the gallery of the Senate chamber, went with a sad heart to his hotel and prepared to leave for New York at an early hour the next morning. His cup of disappointment seemed to be about full. With the exception of Alfred Vail, a young student in the University, through whose influence some money had been subscribed in return for a one-fourth interest in the invention, and of Professor L.D. Gale, who had shown much interest in the work and was also a partner in the enterprise, Morse knew of no one who seemed to believe enough in him and his telegraph to advance another dollar.
As he came down to breakfast the next morning a young lady entered and came forward with a smile, exclaiming, ”I have come to congratulate you.” ”Upon what?” inquired the professor. ”Upon the pa.s.sage of your bill,” she replied. ”Impossible! Its fate was sealed last evening. You must be mistaken.” ”Not at all,” answered the young lady, the daughter of Morse's friend, the Commissioner of Patents, H.L. Ellsworth; ”father sent me to tell you that your bill was pa.s.sed. He remained until the session closed, and yours was the last bill but one acted upon, and it was pa.s.sed just five minutes before the adjournment. And I am so glad to be able to be the first one to tell you. Mother says you must come home with me to breakfast.”