HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 299 



necessary. It was tlierefore evident to me that the one large cup-bat- 

 tery of Morse sliould be made into ten or fifteen smaller ones to make 

 it a battery of intensity, so as to project the electric fluid. . 

 Accordingly I substituted the battery of many cups for the battery of 

 one cup. The remaining defect in the Morse machine, as first seen by 

 me, was that the coil of wire around the poles of the electro-magnet 

 consisted of but a few turns only, while, to give the greatest projectile 

 power, the number of turns should be increased from tens to hundreds, 

 as shown by Professor Henry, in his paper published in the American 

 Journal of Science, 1831. . . . After substituting the battery of 

 twenty cups for that of a single cup, we added some hundred or more 

 turns to the coil of wire around the poles of the magnet, and sent a mes- 

 sage through 200 feet of conductors ; then through 1,000 feet ; and then 

 through ten miles of wire arranged on reels in my own lecture-room in 

 the New York University, in the presence of friends. All these experi- 

 ments were repeated with the original Morse machine, modified as I 

 have stated, by increasing the number of battery-cups and the number 

 of turns of wire around the magnet."* 



The following account by the anthor himself, of his first experiments, 

 is taken from his own deposition in the "Bain" case, in February, 1851 : 

 "In the year 1835, I was appointed a professor in the New York City 

 University, and about the month of November of that year I occupied 

 rooms in the university buildings. There 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 passed over the other two, a wooden pendulum suspended 

 to the top piece of the picture or stretching frame and vibrating across 

 the papei as it passed over the center wooden drum, a pencil at the 

 lower end of the pendulum in contact with the i)aper, 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 closing 

 and breaking the circuit, resting on an endless band (composed of car- 

 pet-binding), which passed over two wooden rollers moved by a wooden 

 crank and carried forward by points projecting from the bottom of the 

 rule downward into the carpet-binding, a lever with a small weight on 



* Memorial of S. F. B. Morse, 8vo. Wasliington, 1875, pp. 15-17. The practical im- 

 provements iutrodnced by Professor Gale into the arrangemout devised by Professor 

 Morse appeared to tlie latter so obviously mere matters of degree that be felt confi- 

 dent (after they were shown) that lie would himself have effected them by simple 

 trial or experimentation ; and he does not appear ever tobavii r(>alized that any scien- 

 tific principle was involved in the difference. But had he iuci-cased separately either 

 the number of bis galvanic elements or the number of coils upon bis magnet, be 

 would equally have failed to accomplish the desired result. The chance that he would 

 have combined these increments may be estimated as very low indeed, when we con- 

 sider tbat much wiser and more scieutitic heads had failed entirely to attain such pur- 

 pose and arrangement. 



