120 GEORGE HERBERT STOCKBRIDGE 



shoot planted by Professor Morse had sprung up in the young 

 man's mind as an independent growth equal in strength and 

 vigor to the original tree. If the conception had had its birth 

 with Vail, he could not have taken more interest in its develop- 

 ment. The elation and depression which alternated in his 

 mind from time to time were intensely personal. It is doubt- 

 ful if the history of these months, whilst Vail and young Bax- 

 ter, a confidential assistant, were at work in their locked room 

 at Speedwell, can be adequately explained except upon the 

 hypothesis that the successes and failures were really VaiFs 

 and not Morse's. The gradually changing relations of the two 

 men, Vail's undefined feeling, which finally grew into expres- 

 sion, that Morse had not given him due public credit for his 

 services, tell a story of natural jealousy on Morse's part, and 

 of an outraged sense of justice on Vail's part, which, not hav- 

 ing received its proper comedy denouement in a generous 

 acknowledgement from Morse, has lately risen to do poetic 

 justice of the retribution sort by exposing Morse's misde- 

 meanor. 



There remains barely space to catalogue the inventions 

 by which Vail revolutionized the telegraph and made it prac- 

 tically what it is to-day. The first alteration which Vail 

 made in the Morse machine was accomplished by substituting 

 a fountain pen for the recording pencil. This proving unsatis- 

 factory, he hit upon the key to the whole trouble by dispens- 

 ing with the pendulum, and using instead an armature lever 

 having a vertical motion, so that it could be brought down 

 upon the record strip instead of being carried across it. It 

 was this invention more than any other which not only made 

 the telegraph possible, but gave birth to nearly all the modern 

 arts of signalling. The typical form of this magnet has a 

 retractile spring normally pulling the pivoted armature away 

 from the core, and adjustable front and back stops for limiting 

 the to-and-fro movement. In some form or other, it consti- 

 tutes the translating medium in the most used systems of 

 annunciators, alarms, and signals, and in every portion of the 

 telegraph; and it is practically identical with the receiver of 

 the telephone. This simple electro mechanical movement 

 enters as an element into the electrical arts with the same 



