SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE. 



243 



session was within a fortnight of its close, February 23d, the 

 bill passed the House. There was a great amount of business 

 before the Senate, and the telegraph bill had not been reached 

 when the last day of the session opened. All that day and 

 into the evening Prof. Morse sat in the gallery of the Senate. 

 Then, assured by his friends that there was no longer any 

 hope, he left the Capitol well-nigh broken-hearted. The next 

 morning he was met at breakfast with congratulations. A few 

 minutes before midnight the bill had been taken up and 

 passed ! 



Prof. Morse's suggestion that the specimen line run be- 

 tween Washington and Baltimore was accepted, and before 

 the month was out preparations for its construction were 

 actively under way. Prof. Morse appointed as his assistants 

 Profs. L. D. Gale and J. C. Fisher. To Mr. Vail he assigned 

 the duty of buying materials and constructing instruments. 

 The wire, carefully insulated, was inclosed in lead pipe, and Mr. 

 Ezra Cornell (afterward the founder of Cornell University) was 

 engaged to lay the pipe underground with a machine which he 

 had invented for the purpose. It was soon found that the in- 

 sulation of the wire was destroyed by the method employed for 

 inclosing it in the pipe, and the plan of stretching the wire on 

 posts was adopted. Steinheil had discovered that the ground 

 could be used as one half of a galvanic circuit, and Morse 

 found before he had proceeded far with the work that he could 

 get better results by utilizing this discovery than with a com- 

 plete circuit of wire. After the line had reached a railroad 

 station halfway to Baltimore, Vail would get news from pas- 

 sengers on trains from Baltimore and telegraph it ahead to 

 Morse in Washington. Much interest was aroused in this way, 

 especially when the news of Henry Clay's nomination for the 

 presidency by the Whig Convention held at Baltimore in May 

 was known in Washington before the passengers on the train 

 could bring it. 



On May 24, 1844, many of the highest officers of the Gov- 

 ernment assembled with the personal friends of Prof. Morse in 

 Washington to witness the first operation of the telegraph over 

 the completed line. To the daughter of Commissioner Ells- 

 worth, who had been the first to inform him of the passage of 

 the appropriation for the telegraph, Prof. Morse had promised 

 that she should give the first message to be sent over the fin- 



