B6 



magnetism. He made no claims, in conversation with me, to any scientific 

 discovery, or to anything beyond his particular machine and process of 

 applying knoTvn principles to telegraphic purposes. He explained to me 

 his plan of a telegraph with which he had recently made a successful 

 experiment : I thought this plan better than any with which I had been 

 made acquainted in Europe ; I became interested in him, and instead of 

 interfering in his application to Congress, I [subsequently*] gave him a 

 certificate, in the form of a letter, stating my confidence in the practica- 

 bility of the electro-magnetic telegraph, and my belief that the form 

 proposed by himself was the best which had been published. 



Mr. Morse subsequently visited Princeton several times to confer with 

 me on the principles of electricity and magnetism which might be appli- 

 cable to the telegraph. I freely gave him any information I possessed. 



I learned in 1837, or thereabouts, that Professor Gale and Dr. Fisher 

 were the scientific assistants of Mr. Morse in preparing the telegraph. 

 Mr. Vail was also employed, but I know not in what capacity, and I am 

 not personally acquainted with him. With Professor Gale I have been 

 intimately acquainted for several years ; he had been a pupil in chemistry 

 of my friend Dr. Torrey, and had studied my papers on electro-magnet- 

 ism, and, as he informed me, had applied them in the arrangement of the 

 apparatus for the construction of Morse's telegraph. 



My researches had been given to the world several years before the 

 attempt was made to reduce the magnetic telegraph to practice. Mr. 

 Chilton, of New York, informed me that he had referred Mr. Morse to 

 them previous to his experiments in the New York University. I was 

 therefore much surprised on the publication, in 1845, of a work purport- 

 ing to give a history of the telegraph, and of the principles on which it 

 was founded, by Mr. Vail, then principal assistant of Mr. Morse, and one 

 of the proprietors of his patent, to find all my published researches 

 relating to the telegraph passed over with little more than the remark 

 that Dr. Moll and myself had made large electro-magnetic magnets. Pre- 

 suming that this publication was authorized by Mr. Morse and the proprie- 

 tors of the telegraph, I complained to some of his friends of the injustice, 

 and after his return from Europe, (for he was absent at the time the book 

 was issued,) I received a letter, copied and signed by Mr. Vail, but written 

 by Mr.3Iorse, as the latter afterwards informed me, excusing the publica- 

 tion, on the ground that he (Mr. Vail) was ignorant of what I had done, 

 and asking me for an account of my researches. This letter was addressed 

 to me after the book had been stereotyped and widely circulated. It has 



* The word subsequently was accidentally omitted in giving my testimony. The omission, 

 however, is of little importance. 



