HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 315 



University, December 7, 1837, Professor Morse reiterated: "Your mem- 

 ory and mine are at variance in regard to the first suggestion of convey- 

 ing intelligence by electricity. I claim to be the one who made it, and 

 in the way which I stated in my letter to you. . . . The idea that 

 I had made a brilliant discovery, that it was original in my mind, was 

 the exciting cause and the perpetual stimuUis to urge me forward in 

 maturing it to a result. Had I supposed at that time, that the thought 

 had ever occurred to any other person, I would never have pursued it; 

 and it was not till I had completed my present invention, that I was 

 aware that the thought of conveying intelligence by electricity had 

 occurred to scientific men some years before. . . . The single scien- 

 tific fact ascertained by rranklin, that electricity can be made to travel 

 any distance instantaneously, is all that I needed to know, aside from 

 mathematical and mechanical science, in order to plan all I invented on 

 board the ship."* 



These extracts sufliciently show the distinguished inventor's profound 

 incomprehension, as well of the nature of the problem to be solved, as 

 of the scientific i)rinciples involved in surmounting liis fundamental 

 difficulties. That his colleague. Professor Gale, should by the mere ap- 

 plication of existing knowledge and established fact, make his magnetic 

 signals operative through successively increasing lengths of wire until 

 ten miles were included in the circuit, appeared — if remarkable, at least 

 quite natural. That any special credit should be due to any one but 

 himself and his invention, in the accomplishment of such a result, ap- 

 peared no less unnatural and irrational : and Dr. Gale has recorded 

 " Professor Morse's great surprise" when his attention was first called to 

 Henry's paper in Silliman's Journal of January, 1831, a year or two after 

 his magnet and battery had been so modified in accordance therewith 

 as to correlate them in " intensity." That even then the inventor under- 

 stood the real import of the paper is rendered doubtful by subsequent 

 developments: his surprise being ajiparently excited mainly by Henry's 

 suggestion that his researches were " directly applicable to the project 

 of forming an electro-magnetic telegrai^h." 



Prof. Sears 0. Walker, the eminent astronomer, in a dejiosition taken 

 in a telegraph suit of " French vs. Eogers," has thus recorded his recol- 

 lection of an interesting interview between Professors Henrj", Morse, and 

 Gale, in January, 1818, at which he was present : " The result of the in- 

 terview was conclusive to my mind that Professor Henry was the sole 

 discoverer of the law on which the 'intensity' magnet depends for its 

 power of sending the galvanic current through a long circuit. I was 

 also led to conclude that Mr. Morse in the course of his own researches 

 and experiments, before he read Professor Henry's article before alluded 

 to, had encountered the same difficulty Mr. Barlow and those who preceded 

 him had encountered ; that is the impossibility of forcing the galvanic 



* Full Exposure of Dr. Charles T. Jaclcson's Pretensions, etc. By Amos Kendall. 1st ed. 

 1850 ; 2d ed. printed in Paris, 1837 : pp. Gl-74. 



