44 REPORT OP NATIONAL MUSEUM^ 1914. 



the first successful method of transmitting messages by electricity 

 for commercial purposes, and it is still universally employed through- 

 out the world. The beginning and development of the system is well 

 represented by many pieces of original apparatus, from the crudest 

 to the most perfect forms. Among these are the first recording ma- 

 chine, made by Mr. Morse with his own hands in 1837, and operated 

 in the same year; and a facsimile of the recording apparatus used 

 on the line built between Baltimore and Washington under the 

 auspices of the United States Government, and opened for business 

 on May 24, 1844. Arranged in historical order is a large series of 

 telegraph transmitting keys, relays, sounders, recording instruments, 

 sj^ecimens of line wire, insulators, batteries, and other material used 

 in the construction and operation of telegraph lines. Especially 

 noteworthy are a number of early pocket telegraph instruments for 

 the use of operators in establishing temporary connection with lines 

 in the Army and along public roads, and a small galvanometer made 

 by Henley, in London, presented by Mr. Morse to Mr. Henry A. 

 Eeed, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and used by him for testing telegraph 

 lines in 1855. There are also several original communications re- 

 corded by the Morse instruments, one at a private exhibition given 

 in New York City in 1838, and another transmitted from Baltimore 

 to Washington in 1844. 



Among the models received from the Patent Office in 1908 are 

 representations of the telegraph devices of Ezra Cornell, 1845 ; Tal. 

 P. Shaffner, 186G; Koyal E. House, 1852; D. E. Hughes, 1856; and 

 Charles Wheatstone, 1874. A similar series illustrates the develop- 

 ment of telegraph repeaters through the inventions of Charles S. 

 Bulkley, 1850; J. E. Smith, and Farmer and Woodman, 1857; J. J. 

 Clark, 1860; G. B. Hicks, 1862; W. H. Hamilton, 1865; J. H. Bunnell 

 and W. G. Brownson, 1868 ; Elisha Gray, 1871 ; L. T. Lindsey, 1873 ; 

 Charles E. Scribner, 1876; Kogers and Crane, 1880; and the Milliken 

 automatic repeater extensively used on telegraph lines in the United 

 States from 1862 to 1895. In the collection deposited by Dr. Alex- 

 ander Graham Bell is an important group of apparatus devised by 

 him in connection with his work on the telegraph which preceded 

 his invention of the telephone. It embraces many devices which 

 have been utilized in telegraphy. An interesting specimen, of which 

 no duplicate is known to exist, is the Bain telegraph recorder em- 

 ployed on telegraph lines in New England from about 1850 to 1866, 

 when it was superseded by the Morse system. By this machine the 

 dots and dashes of the Bain alphabet were marked on a circular sheet 

 of paper, moistened with a solution of potassium ferrocyanide, by the 

 chemical action of the electric current. 



The south east range, of which only a part is now available, con- 

 tains a few examples relating to the history of the automobile as well 



