310 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 



the appropriation bad been expended.* In Marcb, 1844, it was decided 

 to put tbe wires on poles, after tbe manner successfully adopted by 

 Weber at Gottiugen eleven years before. The different plans of insulat- 

 ing support proposed, were submitted by Professor Morse to Henry for 

 his opinion, and he decided in favor of Mr. Ezra Cornell's plan of sepa- 

 rating the wires as far apart as convenient, and attaching each wire to 

 an independent glass insulator, t The line was accordingly erected on 

 this plan ; and by the middle or latter part of May, 1844, was completed 

 from Washington to Baltimore. On the 24th of that month, the first 

 formal message was transmitted through it between the two cities, and 

 recorded by the electro-magnet in the dot-and-dash alphabet-! From 

 this time the success of the electric telegraph in the United States was 

 assured, and its extension over our broad domain was comparatively 

 rapid. 



This prolonged review of the history of the "Morse telegraph" has 

 been ventured upon in this connection, partly to bring out into just re- 

 lation and relief one or two important points, and in part to illustrate 

 the gradual i)rogress of development of the system, in the career of a 

 single inventor. With that strong "subjectivity" (perhaps essential to 

 the success both of the artist and of the artisan) which characterized 

 him. Professor Morse always believed his invention to have been prac- 

 tically fidl-fledged at its birth, or rather at its conception ; and quite 

 unconscious of the slow and small advances derived from gathered ex- 

 perience or external suggestion, failed seemingly to realize how com- 

 pletely his earlier methods were discarded and displaced by later improve- 

 ments. § 



* Professor Morse says: " It was abandoned, among other reasons, in consequence of 

 ascertainiuo- that in the process of inserting the wire into the leaden tubes (which was 

 at the moment of forming the tube from the lead at melting heat) the insulated cover- 

 ing of the wires had become charred at various and numerous points of the line to such 

 an extent that greater delay and expense would be necessary to repair the damage 

 than to put the wire on posts." (Prime's Life of Morse, chap, xi, p. 478.) 



tMr. Cornell afterward distinguished himself by devoting, in 1865, half a million of 

 dollars from the proiits of his telegraphic enterprises, to the founding at Ithaca, N. Y. 

 of the university bearing his name. He subsequently contributed nearly as much 

 more ; making his total endowment in the neighborhood of a million dollars. 



tTlie completion of the experimental telegraph authorized by act of Congress was 

 thus formally announced by Professor Morse to the Secretary of the Treasury, under 

 whose direction the appropriation had been placed : " Washington, June 3, 1844. Sir : 

 I have the honor to report that the experimental essay authorized by the act of Con- 

 gress on March :?, 1843, appropriating 30,000 dollars for testing my system of electro- 

 magnetic telegraph, * and of such length and between such poiuts as shall test its 

 practicability and utility,' has been made between Washington and Baltimore, a dis- 

 tance of forty miles, coiinecting the Capitol in the former city with the railroad depot 

 in Pratt street in tbe latter city. . . ." This was six years after the English line 

 of thirteen miles had been in operation. While Lomond, in 1787, and Steinlieil, in 1837, 

 had employed but a single wire for transmitting messages from either end, INIorse, in 

 1844, required two circuits of four wires fof the same i)erformance ; one pair of wires for 

 the outward and one pair for the inward passage. 



vS In a letter addressed to Dcmald JNIann, esq., December, 1852, Professor Morse rather 

 quaintly remarks: "In elaborating the invention in its earlier iL«i:ages, many mo<lilica- 

 tions of its various parts were tried, and many of IJk^. supposed improvements then 

 deemed necessary to its perfection have since been fV)uud unnecessary and useless." 

 {Americo.n Telegraph Magazine, December 15, 1852, vol. i, No. 3, p. 130.) 



