312 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 



vise another mode of applying iny ajiparatus, — a mode entirely original 

 with me." * 



lu a letter to INtr. Alfred Vail, not long after having formed a i^artner- 

 ship with that gentleman, he wrote : '' I claim to be the original 

 suggester and inventor of the electric magnetic telegraph, on the 19th 

 of October, 1832, on board the packet- ship Snlly, on my voyage from 

 Franco to the United States, and consequently the inventor of the first 

 reall}' practicable telegraph on the electric principle." t Some ten years 

 later he wrote to Professor Walker : " It is at the date, 1832, of Baron 

 Schilling's invention of his needle-telegraph (since abandoned as imprac- 

 ticable from various and obvious causes), that I conceived my electro- 

 magnetic telegraph, and first devised an apparatus applying magnetism 

 produced by electricity or the power of the electro-magnet to imprint 

 characters at a distance." | And such was ever his firm conviction. 

 Some twenty years later, he wrote at Paris: " If it be asked why I have 

 assumed the date of the year 1832 as a standpoint, I reply, because at 

 that date the idea was first conceived, and the process and means first 

 developed." § 



The invention however as unfolded in his caveat of October 3, 1837, 

 is sufficiently embryonic for physiological study; and though our patent 

 law, on grounds of sound policy, excludes all evidence of the inception 

 of a foreign competitive invention, admitting only i)erfected and fully 

 published details successfully to interfere (in a question of priority) with 

 the first suggestions of the American inventor, || obviously no such patri- 

 otic rule is admissible in any scientific histor^^" of the progress of actual 

 discovery. Interesting as the earliest gleams of a successful application 

 and invention undoubtedly are, they are too little accessible to impar- 

 tial investigation to claim the prerogative of a recognized chronology. 



* This letter seems very positively to exclude tlie claim to having ''conceived the 

 idea" of the magnetic telegraph iu ISoi. 



tVail's Ekctro-Mofjnetic Tdctjraph, 1845, p. 154. 



t Morse's letter to Professor S<nu's C. Walker, dated Washington, January 31, 1848. 

 The writer is exciisable for assuming 18:52 as the date of Barou Schilling's invention, 

 (the date of his return from China,) as this is the date usually assigned in the popular 

 text-hooks. Schilling's invention however so far irora being either "impracticable" 

 or '"abandoned," is tiie essential basis of the telegraph now in use throughout Eng- 

 land. 



§ Modern Telq/raplnj, a pamphlet by S. F. B. Morse. Paris, 18G7, p. 10. In a letter to 

 Donald Mann, esq. (editor of the Telegraph Magazine), dated "Poughkeepsie, De- 

 cember, 1852," Professor Morse stoutly maintained his claim to priority of practical 

 development (if not of lirst conception) of an electric recording telegraph; and with 

 paternal exaggeration he declared, of his tirst crude exi)erimcnt at the close of the year 

 1835, "The truth is, the child was born, and breathed, and spoke, in 1835. It had 

 then all the essential characteristics of the future mau." {American Telegraph Maga- 

 zine. December 1.5, 18.52, vol.i, No. 3, p. 130.) Its lirst transmission of an intelligible 

 message was made September 2, 1837. 



II " Whenever it appears that a patentee at the time of making his applica- 

 tion for the patent believed himself to be the original and tirst inventor or dis- 

 coverer of the thing patented, the same shall iu)t be held to be void on account of the 

 invention or discovery, or any part thereof, having been known or used in a foreign 

 country before his invention or discovery thereof, if it had not lieen patented or 

 desc>-ibe(l in a i)rinted publication." (Act of Jitlij i, 1831), section 15, lievi^ed Stattttcs, 

 appi ved March 2, 1877, title Ix, sec. 4923.) 



