ii8 GEORGE HERBERT STOCKBRIDGE 



strength of purpose with which Morse pursued his object, 

 his unfaltering faith and his absohite engrossment for many 

 years in the notion which took possession of him on that re- 

 turn voyage, were evidences and elements of Morse's personal 

 greatness and power, to which the world will always be in- 

 debted; but to Morse the inventor the world owes little by 

 comparison, because he was not able to give abundantly from 

 that source. 



Nevertheless, in 1837, Morse, then a professor in Colum- 

 bia college, had constructed a crude apparatus which embod- 

 ied in operative form the principle of the electromagnetic 

 recording telegraph. He first showed it to his associate. 

 Professor Gale, and later in the same year to Professor Dau- 

 bery of Oxford university, and others in Professor Gale's 

 laboratory of the college. The Western Union Telegraph 

 company has fortunately succeeded in getting possession of 

 the identical apparatus used on this occasion, and it may 

 still be seen by the curious at their office in New York. The 

 to-and-fro motion which Morse sought was obtained by the 

 movement of a pendulum toward the magnet when the cur- 

 rent was on, and its return by gravity when the current was 

 removed. By means of the pencil these movements were 

 recorded on the moving strip. In connection with the mechan- 

 ism, which constituted the receiving apparatus, Morse sup- 

 plied a transmitter. This consisted of a forked lever sus- 

 pended over a pair of mercury cups, and a type rule laid 

 on an endless band which passed around two rollers, and was 

 moved by a crank. The type rule was provided with raised 

 type, the order of which was understood to represent one or 

 more symbols or parts of a message. As the raised type 

 passed successively under a projection at the bottom of the 

 forked lever, the fork was depressed far enough to close the 

 electric circuit, which was again opened as the type moved by. 



Such was the Morse telegraph as it existed when Alfred 

 Vail happened in at the exhibition in Professor Gale's lecture 

 room, September 2, 1837. The first important improvement 

 was made when Gale suggested the employment of Henry's 

 magnet in place of that of Sturgeon, and the use of many cells 

 of battery coupled together in place of the single pair of plates 



