436 WRITINGS OP JOSEPH HENRY. [1857 



5. The principles I had developed were applied by Dr. 

 Gale to render Morse's machine effective at a distance. 



The results here given were among my earliest experi- 

 ments: in a scientific point of view I considered them of 

 much less importance than what I subsequently accom- 

 plished; and had I not been called upon to give my testi- 

 mony in regard to them, I would have suffered them to 

 remain (without calling public attention to them) a part of 

 the history of science to be judged of by scientific men who 

 are the best qualified to pronounce upon their merits. 



Appendix A. — Letter from Dr. Gale. 



"Washington, D. C, April 7, 1856. 



Sir : In reply to your note of the 3d instant, respecting the Morse tele- 

 graph, asking me to state definitely the condition of the invention when I 

 first saw the apparatus in the winter of 183G, I answer: This apparatus was 

 Morse's original instrument, usually known as the type apparatus, in which 

 the types, set up in a composing stick, were run through a circuit breaker, 

 and in which the battery was the cylinder battery, with a single pair of 

 plates. This arrangement also had another peculiarity, namely, it was the 

 electro-magnet used by Sturgeon, and shown in drawings of the older works 

 on that subject, having only a few turns of wire in the coil which surrounded 

 the poles or arms of the magnet. The sparseness of the wires in the magnet 

 coils and the use of the single cup battery were to me, on the first look at 

 the instrument, obvious marks of defect, and I accordingly suggested to the 

 professor, without giving my reasons for so doing, that a battery of many 

 pairs should be substituted for that of a single pair, and that the coil on each 

 arm of the magnet should be increased to many hundred turns each ; which 

 experiment, if I remember aright, was made on the same day with a battery 

 and wire on hand, (furnished I believe bj' myself,) and it was found that 

 while the original arrangement would only send the electric current through 

 a few feet of wire, say 15 to 40, the modified arrangement would send it 

 through as many hundred. Although I gave no reason at the time to Pro- 

 fessor Morse for the suggestions I had proposed in modifying the arrange- 

 ment of the machine, I did so afterwards, and referred in my explanations to 

 the paper of Professor Henry, in the 19th volume of the American Journal 

 of Science, page 400 and onward. It was to these suggestions of mine that 

 Professor Morse alludes in his testimony before the Circuit Court for the 

 eastern district of Pennsylvania, in the trial of B. B. French and others vs- 

 Kogers and others. See printed copy of complainant's evidence, page 1G8, 

 beginning with the words, "Early in 1836 I procured 40 feet of wire," &c., 

 and page 169, where Professor Morse alludes to myself and compensation 

 for services rendered to him, &c. 



At the time I gave the suggestions above named, Professor Morse was 



