HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 343 



The claim is clearly made then, that Alfred Vail in the first place invented an entirely- 

 new alphabet; secondly, ho invented an entirely new machine in which was the first 

 combination of the horizontal lever motion to actuate a pen or pencil or style, so ar- 

 ranged as to perform the new duties required with precision, simplicity, and ra))idity ; 

 and thirdly, Vail invented, several years afterward [in 1844], the new lever and 

 [grooved] roller which embossed into paper the wholly simple and perfect alphabetic 

 characters which ho alone originated."* 



Numerous experiments with various kinds of pencils, fountain-pens, and inked 

 roulettes, having shown their inefficiency for the uniform marking of the "dot-and- 

 dash" alphabet, Alfred Vail at last boldly discarded all marking devices, and em- 

 ployed a blunt steel point near the end of the registering lever, playing directly ove- 

 a narrow groove in the roller which supported the record-fillet of paper. In this man, 

 ner the variable lines of the Vail alphabet were permanently indented in the paper 

 with x^erfect facility and unerring regularity. Mr. F. B. Read in his biogi'aiihical 

 sketch of Samuel F. B. Morse (in the work just quoted), after alluding to his original 

 apparatus as being placed by him " in Mr.Vail's hands for an entire mechanical recon- 

 struction throughout, to speak a language not only wholly unknown to the first ma- 

 chine, but to perform entu'ely new functions, and to produce an entirely new system of 

 signs and letters which the first by its structure was physically incapable of being made 

 to speak ;" adds with regard to Mr. Vail's subsequent improvement, " His more perfect 

 invention of a steel style upon a lever which could strike into the paper as it was 

 drawn onward over a grooved roller and emboss ujion it the same alphabetic characters, 

 was not made until 1844, about the time the first line of telegraph began to operate 

 between Baltimore and Washington."! 



Simple as may appear the substitution of the dry point for the inked wheel or pen, 

 its introduction effected a wonderful saving of time, of attention, and of annoyance. 

 In a memorandum attached to the original model of the lever-style and grooved roller, 

 Alfred Vail wrote, " I have not asserted i^ublicly my right as first and sole inventor, 

 because I wished to i)reserve the jieaceful unity of the invention, and because I could 

 not according to my contract with Professor Morse, have got a patent for it."1: 



Mr. Read, in the same biograiihy of Morse, after quoting his feeble and insufficient 

 tribute to Vail, in his speech at the banquet given at New York on the evening of 

 Decem])er 29, 1868, in honor of the "successful" inventor, (in which he said of hia 

 intellectual offspring, "It found a friend in Mr. Alfred Vail, of New Jersey, who with 

 his father and brother /Hrn/.s/(C(Z the means to give the child a decent tlress;") makes 

 the comment, " It would have been more magnanimous if in those last days of the aged 

 savant he had stated the precise facts, and given Alfred Vail the full credit to which 

 he was justly entitled. He would thus have generously raised a fitting monument 

 to the memory of one who had years before 'been gathered to his fathers' in the prime 

 of manhood, who had with wondrous modesty and singular reticence refrained from 

 claiming as of his own invention, the improved 'Morse' instrument and alphabet." § 



In again referring to this subject in his following sketch of the life of Vail, the 

 author adds, " These are the quiet and subdued terms in which Professor Morse was 

 content to hand his co-inventor and early friend down to posterity. He makes no 

 allusion to Alfred Vail which would lead any one to susjiect that he was anything 

 more than a skillful mechanic ; — that Vail had ever done anything beyond putting 

 into form the concex)tion of Morse's brain. To say the least, it was an unhapxiy hold- 

 ing off from a magnanimous and generous course,"|| 



*A collection of biographical notices, entitled Up the Heights of Fame and Foi-lune, 

 by F. B. Read, 8vo. Cincinnati, 1873, pp. 270, 271. Thirty-four pages are devoted to an 

 account of the life of Alfred Vail ; who died at Morristown, January 18, 1859. 



t f7}j the Heights of Fame and Fortune, pp. 244, 24.'S. 



t Quoted in same work : j). 291. § Same work : p. 244. 



II Same woi'k : p. 297. A friend of Mr. Vail, (unnamed,) who visited Professor 

 Morse at his request during his last illness in March, 1872, is reported as stating, '* In 



