6\)i HENEY AND THE TELEGEAPH. 



On his return from a visit to the works, he wrote back to Mr. Vail, on 

 the loth of November, 1837, "1 arrived just in time to see the experi- 

 ment Professor Gale was making with the entire ten miles, and you will 

 be gratitied and agreeably surpiised when I inform you that the result 

 now is that with a little addition of wire to the coils of the small mag- 

 net which 1 had all along used, the power was as great apparently 

 through ten as through three miles. This result has surprised us all 

 (yet there is no mistake), and I conceive settles the whole matter." 



In a second communication to the Secretary of the Treasury, dated 

 November 28, 1837, Professor Morse announced this encouraging suc- 

 cess : " I informed you that I had succeeded in marking permanently 

 and intelligibly at the distance of half a mile. Professor Gale of our uni- 

 versity, and Mr. Alfred Vail, of the Speedwell Iron Works, near Mor- 

 ristown, N. J. are now associated with me in the scientific and mechan- 

 ical parts of the invention.* AYe have procured several miles of wire, 

 and I am hai)py to announce to you that our success has thus far 

 been complete. At a distance of five miles, witli a common Cruick- 

 shanks' l^attery of eighty-seven plates (four by three and a half inches, 

 each plate), the marking was as perfect on the register as in the first 

 instance of half a mile. We have recently added five miles more 

 (making in all ten miles) with the same result ; and we now have no 

 doubt of its effecting a similar result at any distance." 



On the completion of the new receiving and recording instruments at 

 the Speedwell Iron Works, an experimental exhibition at the place, with 

 three miles of coated copper wire, extended around a large factory-room, 

 was made in the presence of a few friends, on the 6th of January, 1838 ; 

 and on the 11th of January another exhibition was freely opened to the 

 public. A report of the trial in a Morristown Journal explains how 

 "the words were put up into numbers through the dictionary; the 

 numbers were set up in the telegraph type in about the same time ordi- 

 narily occupied in setting up the same in a printing office ; they were 

 then all passed complete by the iiort-rule ;" and being automatically 

 recorded at the extreme end of the wire, " the marks or numbers were 

 easily legible, and by means of the dictionary were resolved again into 

 words." 



Shortly after this. Professor Morse (or his assistant, Mr. Yail) devised 

 for the first time a system of alphabetic sj^mbols for his telegraph. It 

 should not l)e forgotten that the vertical recording-lever of the original 

 ]\Iorse appararatus was so arranged that it must necessarily mark a co)i- 

 thmous line, either straight or zig-zag. It was never devised for an 

 "alphabet," and was incapable of an intermittent dot or dasli marking. 

 The new instrument completed by Mr. Vail, and first operated on the 



* In a letter to the Hon. Frauds O. J. Smith, chairman of the Committee ou Com- 

 merce, ITonse of Eoprcsentatives, dated February 15, 18;58, Professor Morse writes : 

 "It is jivoper that 1 should here state that the pateut-ri,i>ht is now jointly owned in 

 un(!qual shares by myself, Professor Gale, of New York City University, and Messrs. 

 Alfred and George Vail." The j)atent was not actually issued till more than two years 

 later. 



