DEVELOPMENT OF THE TELEGRAPH 



as the most probable means by which the invention 

 might be perfected, and within two years after Fara- 

 day's great discovery a practical working telegraph, 

 the first that may properly be so termed, was invented 

 by two Germans, Gauss and Weber, of Gottingen. In 

 this telegraph the principle of Schilling's deflecting 

 needle was combined with Faraday's principle of the 

 electromagnet. The signal and receiving stations were 

 connected by two lines of wires, and as early as 1833 

 the two German experimenters were using this telegraph 

 as a means of sending messages. 



As this first telegraph had been constructed for 

 scientific rather than commercial purposes, the two in- 

 ventors requested the assistance of Professor Steinheil 

 of Munich in developing their discovery into practical 

 form. This was done in a most ingenious manner, the 

 result being a really very practical instrument for both 

 sending and receiving messages; but in the meantime 

 the problem had been solved in a much more simple and 

 practical form in America by the man who must go 

 down in history as the real father of telegraphy, Samuel 

 F. B. Morse, the artist-inventor. 



The history of the attitude taken by his native country 

 toward Samuel Morse affords at least one opportunity 

 to refute the old proverb that "a prophet is not without 

 honor save only in his own country." For after Eng- 

 land had refused even to grant patents on Morse's 

 invention, and France had first granted such patents 

 and then appropriated them without remuneration to 

 the inventor, while Russia and Germany turned a cold 

 shoulder to the young American, his own country heaped 



VOL. VIII. 2 F I? 1 



