44. REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1914. 
the first successful method of transmitting messages by electricity 
for commercial purposes, and it is still universally employed through- 
out the world. The beginning and development of the system is well 
represented by many pieces of original apparatus, from the crudest 
to the most perfect forms. Among these are the first recording ma- 
chine, made by Mr. Morse with his own hands in 1837, and operated 
in the same year; and a facsimile of the recording apparatus used 
on the line built between Baltimore and Washington under the 
auspices of the United States Government, and opened for business 
on May 24, 1844. Arranged in historical order is a large series of 
telegraph transmitting keys, relays, sounders, recording instruments, 
specimens of line wire, insulators, batteries, and other material used 
in the construction and operation of telegraph lines. Especially 
noteworthy are a number of early pocket telegraph instruments for 
the use of operators in establishing temporary connection with lines 
in the Army and along public roads, and a small galvanometer made 
by Henley, in London, presented by Mr. Morse to Mr. Henry A. 
Reed, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and used by him for testing telegraph 
lines in 1855. There are also several original communications re- 
corded by the Morse instruments, one at a private exhibition given 
in New: York City in 1838, and another transmitted from Baltimore 
to Washington in 1844. 
Among the models received from the Patent Office in 1908 are 
representations of the telegraph devices of Ezra Cornell, 1845; Tal. 
P. Shaffner, 1866; Royal E. House, 1852; D. E. Hughes, 1856; and 
Charles Wheatstone, 1874. A similar series illustrates the develop- 
ment of telegraph repeaters through the inventions of Charles S. 
Bulkley, 1850; J. E. Smith, and Farmer and Woodman, 1857; J. J. 
Clark, 1860; G. B. Hicks, 1862; W. H. Hamilton, 1865; J. H. Bunnell 
and W. G. Brownson, 1868; Elisha Gray, 1871; L. T. Lindsey, 1873; 
Charles E. Scribner, 1876; Rogers and Crane, 1880; and the Milliken 
automatic repeater extensively used on telegraph lines in the United 
States from 1862 to 1895. In the collection deposited by Dr. Alex- 
ander Graham Bell is an important group of apparatus devised by 
him in connection with his work on the telegraph which preceded 
his invention of the telephone. It embraces many devices which 
have been utilized in telegraphy. An interesting specimen, of which 
no duplicate is known to exist, is the Bain telegraph recorder em- 
ployed on telegraph lines in New England from about 1850 to 1866, 
when it was superseded by the Morse system. By this machine the 
dots and dashes of the Bain alphabet were marked on a circular sheet 
of paper, moistened with a solution of potassium ferrocyanide, by the 
chemical action of the electric current. 
The south east range, of which only a part is now available, con- 
tains a few examples relating to the history of the automobile as well 
