HENRY AND THE TELEGEAPH. 317 



statement: "First. I certainly shall sliow that I have not only mani- 

 fested every disposition to give due credit to Professor Henry, but 

 under the hasty impression that he deserved credit for discoveries in 

 science beaiing upon the telegraph, I did actually give him a degree of 

 credit not only beyond what he had received at that time from the scien- 

 tific world, but a degree of credit to which subsequent research has 

 l)roved him not to be entitled. Secondly. I shall show that I am not 

 indebted to him for any discovery in science bearing on the telegraph ; 

 and that all discoveries of principles having this bearing were made, not 

 by Professor Henry, but by others, and prior to any experiments of Pro- 

 fessor Henry in the science of electro-magnetism." * 



In the inevitable dilemma thus assumed by the pamphleteer, under 

 the clear light of historic record, it is most charitable not to impugn the 

 writer's candor. The evidences diligently gathered by him, of electric 

 impulse transmitted to great distances, before the date of Henry's inves- 

 tigations, certainly seem to show a surprising misconception of the phe- 

 nomena and the principles of electro-magnetism. That with such mis- 

 conception he should fad to appreciate an indebtedness to Henry's labors, 

 is perhaps not surprising ; but that he should thus ignore the services 

 and statements of his faithful friend and colleague — Professor Gale, his 

 great obligations to whom had been constantly admitted, appears less 

 amenable to exidanation or excuse. 



Professor Morse could say with undoubted truth, that not till after the 

 successful working of his invention, had he ever heard of Henry's re- 

 searches. In his letter to Professor Walker, just above quoted, in refer- 

 ring to the time and the nature of his invention, he wrote : " I was utterly 

 ignorant that the idea of an electric telegrai^h of any kind whatever, 

 had been conceived by any other person. I took it for granted that the 

 effects I desired could be produced at a distance ; and accordingly in the 

 confidence of this persuasion, I devised and constructed my api>aratus 

 for the pui"[Jose. I had never even heard or read of Professor Henry's 

 experiments, nor did I become acquainted with them until after all my 

 apparatus was constructed and in oiieration through half a mile of wire, 

 at the l^ew York City University, in 1837. I then learned for the first 

 time that an electric telegraph of some kind had been thought of before 

 I had thought of it." In his pamphlet of January, 1855, he mentions that 

 at the date of Henry's publication in Silliman's Journal, he was sojourn- 

 ing in Italy. " From the autumn of the year 1829 till the autumn of the 

 year 1832 I .was in Europe, principally in Italy. . . . The fact is, it 

 did not come to my knowledge until five years after my return, in ISST."!" 



* A Defence against the injur ious deductions drawn from the deposition of Prof. Joseph 

 Hcnrii [ill the scvPA'al telograj)!! suits]; by Samuel F. B. Morse, Jaimary 1855, p. 8. 

 (See "" Supplemeut," Note H.) 



t Morse's Defence against the injurious deductions, etc. (p. 15, and foot-note). Thus 

 while Morse — dreaming only of artistic fame, was assiduously cultivating his art iu 

 Italy, nearly two years before he met with Dr. Jackson on the homeward ship, or be- 

 fore the conception of electric signaling had dawned upon his mind, Henry had aa 

 electro-magnetic circuit of a mile, with beU signal, in actual oiieration at the Albany- 

 Academy. 



