HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY IN AMERICA 119 



which Morse had experimented with. From that point the 

 telegraph was developed, largely through Vail's labors, to a 

 practical and commercial success. 



Alfred Vail was by training and endowment an inventor. 

 His father, Judge Stephen Vail, was the proprietor of the 

 Speedwell Iron w^orks at Speedwell, N. J., and young Alfred 

 had spent a great deal of time as a boy in his father's factory, 

 indulging his inherited taste for mechanical pursuits. Simul- 

 taneously with his work in the factory, he had been an ardent 

 student of scientific matters, and had become thoroughly 

 grounded in the basic principles of natural philosophy. So 

 that, later, when, as a student of Columbia college, he went 

 to call on Professor ^lorse on that memorable second of 

 September, he was prepared not only to grasp the magnitude 

 of the conception, but to understand perfectly the operation 

 of the apparatus and the problems still awaiting solution. He 

 says : 



''I saw this instrument work, and became thoroughly 

 acquainted with the principles of its operation, and, I may 

 say, struck with the rude machine, containing, as I believed, 

 the germ of what was destined to produce great changes in 

 the condition and relation of mankind." 



There were still doubts to be resolved; but in the end he 

 decided to embark in the enterprise, and sink or swim 

 wdth it. The enthusiasm of his son soon won over Judge 

 Vail, and on September 23, 1837, an agreement was entered 

 into between Professor Morse and Alfred Vail, by the terms 

 of which Vail was to receive a one fourth interest in the inven- 

 tion in the United States in return for his time and services 

 for constructing at his own expense, and exhibiting before a 

 congressional committee, one of the new telegraphs, and for 

 procuring the necessary domestic patents. To explain the 

 proviso regarding the exhibition of an apparatus, it should 

 be stated that the house of representatives in February, 1837, 

 had taken steps to the establishment in the United States of 

 a suitable system of telegraphy, and had appointed a com- 

 mittee to investigate the subject. 



When Vail had once committed himself to the new work, 

 his devotion to it assumed the character of a passion. The 



