9° 
THE TELEGRAPH. 
Morse, constructed the first electro-magnetic telegraph, which, 
as we have seen, was exhibited at Bonn two years later, and 
then transferred to Heidelberg, whence Cooke imported it into 
England. In the last-named country, a telegraph constructed 
on the same principle as that of Schilling had been working 
on a line a mile and a quarter long forty-one days previous to 
the 4th of September, 1837. 
We may here observe that, at the time of his journey from 
London to Paris, in 1838, Morse supposed from what he 
heard that Schilling had not invented his telegraph until 
December, 1832, or 1833. This mistake induced Morse to 
advance that ill-founded claim to priority that we find in his 
letter of October, 1832. Unfortunately also, all the treatises 
on the electric telegraph perpetuate this error by giving 1833 
as the date of Schilling’s invention. 
The present truly useful Morse apparatus was brought to a 
degree of perfection permitting of its universal adoption by 
the labours of Alfred Vail and his brother, and it still remains 
the best form of registering telegraph. 
The first telegraph line worked by electricity was formed by 
Cooke, in 1839, between Paddington and West Drayton, on 
the Great Western Railway. In the following year, he laid 
a telegraph along the Blackwall Railway, and in 1841 did the 
like for the Glasgow and Edinburgh Railway. In 1843 the 
first-named line was extended from West Drayton to Slough. 
It was used on the 1st of January, 1845, to bring about the 
arrest of the murderer Tawell, and this circumstance had the 
effect of attracting attention to the telegraph, which up to that 
time had been little used. 
In America, the first line, extending from Washington to 
Baltimore, was completed in 1844. On the 24th of March of 
that year, a phrase dictated by the daughter of Morse’s friend 
Els worth, the head of the Patent Office, was transmitted along 
the line and repeated at Baltimore. The original telegram 
has been preserved in the Museum of the Historical Society of 
Hartford (Connecticut). 
To Germany belongs the credit of having been the first to 
establish correspondence by electric telegraph. The lines con¬ 
necting the central parts of the cities of Gottingen and of 
Munich with the observatories of Gauss and of Steinheil 
