360 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 



cations by means of an alphabet ; and improving on bis predecessors, devised this 

 alphabet in its simplest form, of a rectilinear succession of dots and lines. 



A few years later, the modification given in the cUjhth column was adopted; * being 

 the code now in use in this country. This second alphabet of Morse retains but seven 

 of the letters in his original alphabet; namely, e, h, k, l, n, p, and Q. The remain- 

 ing symbols are changed in their application. Both of these alphabets present the 

 anomaly of employing for the letter L the unique symbol, a dash of double length: a 

 symbol whose combinations with dots might have been much more appropriately re- 

 served for designating numerals. And they both also present the very awkward ar- 

 rangement of introducing in five or six cases, a space in the middle of a letter. This 

 occurred with B, c, D, F, G or j, and R, in the first alphabet, and remains with c, O, 

 R, Y, and z in the later alj)habet. Whence it becomes difficult to distinguish be- 

 tween c and IE, between o andEE, between Rand Ei, between Y and ii, and between z 

 and SE ; and if on the other hand the intra-literal space be made too brief, c or R 

 may easily be mistaken for s, o for i, and Y or z for H. 



The nintli and last column gives the alphabet adopted by the Vienna convention in 

 October, 1851, for European languages; as represented in Prescott's larger treatise on 

 Electricity and the Electric Telc(jrap1i, 1877: (page 480.) This alphabet avoids the obvi- 

 ous blunder in Morse's notation, and presents a homogeneous system. In this code 

 eleven of the Morse letters are changed: c, F, L, and R, having been taken from 

 Gerke's alphabet, o, and p, from Steinheil's, and J, Q, X, Y, and z, from other sources. 

 Of the 07-igiiial " Morse alphabet" only four letters are retained, viz, E, H, K, and N. 

 This European or "international" alphabet is however in a few of its symbols, bet- 

 ter adapted to the German than to the English language. Accordingly in the Atlantic 

 cable alphabet, the two letters M (11), and o (111), have been transposed ; as in Eng- 

 lish the letter o occurs nearly three times as frequently as the letter M. 



We thus perceive by what apparently small steps so simple a contrivance as an al- 

 phabetic notation, (scarcely demanding the exercise of invention,) has been succes- 

 sively modified and improved. But although the "Vienna" alphabet is now univer- 

 sally employed elsewhere, American operators have not yet had the intelligent courage 

 to incur the temporary additional labor and inconvenience of change, for the jierma- 

 nent advantage of a more perfect system, t 



* Represented in Vail's Treatise, 1845, p. 27 ; in TurnbuU's Treatise, 1853, p. 73 ; in 

 G. B. Prescott's Hist, of Electric Telegraph, 1860, p. 89 ; and in F. L. Pope's Modern Prac- 

 tice of the Electric Telegraph, 4th ed. 1871, p. 101. 



t "It has been proposed to introduce the European alphabet in this country also ; 

 but although the advantages of snch a reform would doubtless be numerous, yet it 

 may perhaps be better to suffer some inconvenience from an acknowledged imperfec- 

 tion, than to attempt to remedy it by introducing a change that would for a time 

 cause serious annoyance to the thousands of skillful operators now in the service." 

 (Prescott's Electricity and the Electric Telegraph, 1877, chap, xxx, p. 431.) 



