SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



signaling and receiving messages. In these experiments, 

 however, the distances to which messages could be sent 

 were limited, and for a year this limitation proved a 

 stumbling-block, but in 1836 he invented his system of 

 "relays" for reinforcing the current at intervals along 

 the line and overcoming the difficulty. 



On the second of September, of the year following 

 (1837), Morse gave his first exhibition of the fruits of 

 five years of labor and privation. In his little room in 

 the old University building in New York he had con- 

 structed a circuit of about seventeen hundred feet of 

 copper wire arranged with sending and receiving in- 

 struments and relays. To this room he invited a few 

 of his intimate friends and there gave a practical ex- 

 hibition of sending and receiving messages. The 

 enthusiasm created by this demonstration led almost 

 immediately to a proposition from the firm of Vail & 

 Co., metal workers in New Jersey, who shortly after 

 became associated with Morse in promoting and 

 developing his telegraph. 



Patents were granted by the United States in 1837, 

 but no action being taken at once by Congress on a 

 petition which Morse made asking for an appropriation 

 of funds to defray the expenses of testing the practicality 

 of his invention, he sailed for Europe. It was while on 

 this trip that England refused to grant him patents, and 

 the other countries of Europe showed their indifference. 

 Returning to America, therefore, Morse renewed his 

 efforts, meeting with little success until 1843. Then 

 Congress finally passed the long delayed appropriation, 

 and on May 24th of the year following a telegraph from 



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