226 THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICAL SCIENCE. 



merits for telegraphing was tbe result. Many of the later developments 

 by Wheatstone are still in use and are hard to beat. 



Steinheil appears to have been anticipated in the idea of making the 

 telegraph self-recording by Morse, who, according to evidence brought 

 forward by himself, thought out some arrangements as early as 1832. 

 Exactly what Morse's first ideas were seems somewhat doubtful, and 

 he did nothing till 1835, when he made a rough model of an electro- 

 magnetic recording telegraph. Morse's mechanical arrangements were 

 of little merit, and his alphabet and method of interpretation by a dic- 

 tionary were clumsy and inconvenient. The chief point of interest in 

 connection with the early history of the Morse telegraph was the pro- 

 posal to make use of Sturgeon's discovery of electro-magnetism of soft 

 iron. Morse, however, seems to have known practically nothing of the 

 subject except that iron could be magnetized by a current, and in con- 

 sulting his colleague, Dr. Gale, he was unwittingly led to use the 

 discoveries of Henry, who had previously practically solved the whole 

 problem. Much of the subsequent improvement in the mechanical 

 arrangements were due to Vail, who became associated with Morse, and 

 the Morse code as we now know it was almost, if not entirely, worked 

 out by Vail. Considerable dispute and some litigation arose over 

 Morse's claims, but that is outside our present subject. There is no 

 doubt that the electric telegraph was a slow growth, inventors, with a 

 view to pecuniary and other advantage, being ever ready to lay hold 

 of each scientific discovery and try to turn it to account. The question 

 who first conceived the idea can never be satisfactorily answered. 



After 1840 there is little to record of a purely electrical character 

 bearing only on telegraphy, but there have been many very ingenious 

 mechanical contrivances introduced for recording signals, for repro- 

 ducing pictures and handwriting, and for printing, for duplexing, quad- 

 ruplexing, and multiplexing telegraph lines, for increasing the rate of 

 signaling, and in many ways increasing the expedition with which 

 messages can be sent. Of course the success of many of these con- 

 trivances, and even their invention, depended upon an increased knowl- 

 edge of the laws of electricity and magnetism. For example, effective 

 duplexing, quadruplexing, etc., depends on a proper understanding of 

 the electrostatic capacity of the line, and this was not understood prop- 

 erly until the mathematical investigations of Thomson and others 

 cleared the matter. For the impetus toward discovery in this direction 

 again we are largely indebted to telegraphy, for much of that class of 

 work was suggested by the difficulties encountered in signaling through 

 long submarine cables. 



The invention of the telephone is fast becoming ancient history, and 

 yet it will always mark one of the greatest of the useful applications 

 of electricity. It does not call for more than a passing remark here, 

 because electro-magnetically it is all in Faraday's and Henry's papers. 



The radiophone should be mentioned because it marks the application 



