87 



been translated into French, and, I believe, published in Paris. To the 

 letter I did not think fit to make any reply. I afterwards received a 

 letter from Mr. Morse, in his own name, on the same subject, to which 

 I gave a verbal reply in January, 1847, in Washington. In this inter- 

 view Mr. IMorse acknowledged that injustice had been done me, but said 

 that proper reparation would be made. Another issue of the same work 

 was made, bearing date 1847, in which there is no change in the state- 

 ment relative to my researches. 



About the beginning of 1848, Mr. Walker, of the Coast Survey, in a 

 report on the application of the telegraph to the determination of dif- 

 ferences of longitude, alluded to my researches. A copy of this was sent 

 to Mr. Morse, which led to an interview between Mr. Walker, Professor 

 Gale, Mr. Morse, and myself. At this meeting, which took place at my 

 office in Washington, Mr. Morse stated that he had not known until read- 

 ing my paper in January, 1847, that I had, two years before his first 

 conception in 1832, settled the point of practicability of the telegraph, 

 and shown how mechanical efiects could be produced at a distance, both 

 in the deflection of a needle and in the action of an electro-magnet ; that 

 he did not know, at the time of his experiments in 1837 that there had 

 been any doubts of the action of a current at a distance, and that in the 

 confidence of the persuasion that the efi"ect could be produced, he had 

 devised the proper apparatus by which his telegraph was put into opera- 

 tion. Professor Gale, being then referred to, stated that Mr. Morse had 

 forgotten the precise state of the case ; that he, (Mr. Morse,) previous to 

 his (Dr. Gale's) connection with him, had not succeeded in producing 

 effects at a distance ; that, when he was first called in, he found Mr. Morse 

 attempting to make an electro-magnet act through a circuit of a few 

 yards of copper wire suspended around a room in the University of New 

 York, and that he could not succeed in producing the desired eifect even 

 in this short circuit ; that he (Dr. Gale) asked him if he had studied Prof. 

 Henry's paper on the subject, and that the answer was "no;" that he 

 then informed Mr. Morse that he would find the principles necessary to 

 success explained in that paper ; that instead of the battery of a single 

 element, he should employ one of a number of pairs ; and that, in place 

 of the magnet with a short single wire, he should use one with a long 

 coil. Dr. Gale further stated that his apparatus was in the same build- 

 ing, and that having articles of the kind he had mentioned, he procured 

 them, and that with these the action was produced through a circuit of 

 half a mile of wire.* To this statement Mr. Morse made no reply. The 



* See Dr. Gale's letter of April, 7, 1856, page 93, 



