314 ' The Atlantic 



she was in the command of a very distinguished captain, WilHam W. 

 Pell. At this time the packets attracted all the well-known and even 

 the famous international passengers and prided themselves on offering 

 the fastest and best possible services. Yet the western passage was 

 slow and tedious even under the best weather conditions. The pack- 

 ets, therefore, made a special effort to please their passengers by pro- 

 viding the best foods and wines in an elaborate dinner served in the 

 latter part of the afternoon which became one of the features of life 

 at sea. It was a method of occupying the time of the passengers and 

 it was customary for such a dinner to last anywhere from two to three 

 hours, and there was a premium set on intelligent conversation as 

 well as on wit. 



Among Captain Pell's passengers on this particular occasion were 

 a Dr. Charles T. Jackson of Boston and Samuel Finley Breese Morse. 

 At this time Morse already enjoyed an international reputation for he 

 was the president of the National Academy of Design and was a 

 painter of vivid portraits of famous people. During one dinner that 

 was to become famous Dr. Jackson began talking about electro-mag- 

 netism, which was then a matter of popular as well as scientific inter- 

 est. He described in some detail experiments with various circuits 

 that he had recently seen carried out in Europe. 



Morse listened very attentively and asked a number of questions. 

 Then, very deliberately, he said that if at some point in the circuit 

 system the passage of the current could be made visible, he saw no 

 reason why such a circuit should not be used as an instantaneous 

 method of communication. In due course the conversation and the 

 long dinner came to an end but the ideas that had been discussed 

 began a new and vigorous life. Morse spent the rest of the voyage 

 brooding about the possibilities of electrical communication. Before 

 the voyage was over he had filled a small notebook with drawings 

 and descriptions of instruments that might have a use in a telegraph 

 system. Before he landed in New York Morse showed this book to 

 Captain Pell and some of the other passengers. Twelve years went by 

 before Morse, in 1844, sent the first message over a successful and 

 practical land telegraph system. 



It is very seldom in the history of invention that we are permitted 

 to know the exact time and circumstance at which an invention takes 

 shape in the mind of the creator. We happen to know in this case 

 because after Morse had completed his work Dr. Jackson brought 

 suit against him claiming that the basic ideas of the invention were 

 his own. At the time of the trial Captain Pell and others who were 



