HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY IN AMERICA 123 



thousand dollars had been spent for naught. The wires were 

 finally strung on poles and the historic message, ''What hath 

 God wrought!" was successfully transmitted on the 23d of 

 May, 1844. 



Even here the fertihty of Vail's invention was constantly 

 exhibited. He discovered the axial magnet, and made work- 

 ing drawings of an ampere meter, in which its principle was 

 to be utilized. He became an original, though not the first 

 inventor of the automatic, vibrating circuit breaker. Other 

 important improvements were devised by him to meet the 

 exigencies of the work as it went along, marking him as an 

 inventor of a very high order. 



There is danger that a comparison of the sort which has 

 been instituted may have resulted in an unjust reflection 

 on Professor Morse. If this has been the case, the injustice 

 must be set right. It may not be forgotten that the original 

 conception of the electromagnetic telegraph was Morse's, 

 and that he actually constructed a working recording appa- 

 ratus. It is true that the recording feature is now disused, 

 but it is a question whether it did not play an important 

 part in securing the interest of congress, without which the 

 whole scheme would have been a failure. Mistrustful as they 

 still were, the members of the congressional committee 

 would have been far more ready to suspect collusion, if an 

 operator had professed to read by the mere sound of a metallic 

 hammer a message sent by a distant confederate. Re- 

 garded as a concrete embodiment of a natural principle, the 

 modem telegraph is mainly Vail's and Henry's; regarded 

 as a commercial enterprise to be floated or, better, re- 

 garded as a great idea permeated through and through with 

 the imagination that rules the world, the telegraph is dis- 

 tinctly Morse's and rightly bears his name. No better 

 statement of the true position of Morse can be given in a few 

 words than has been made by Mr. Charles L. Bucking- 

 ham. 



"The world has lost nothing, nor is it less to his credit, 

 if parts of the invention which he esteemed most, have, like 

 the false works of an arch, been removed. When they be- 

 come an incumbrance their absence was as important as 



