Speedwell Iron Works at Speedwell, New Jersey, and young Alfred had spent a great deal of time as a boy in his father's factory, indulging his inherited taste for mechanical pursuits. Simultaneously with his work in the factory, he had been an ardent student of scientific matters, and had become throughly grounded in the basic principles of natural philosophy. So that, later, when, as a student of Col proviso regarding the exhibition of an apparatus, it should be stated that the House of Representatives in February, 1837, had taken steps to the establishment in the United States of a suitable system of telegraphy, and had appointed a committee to investigate the subject. When Vail had once committed himself to the new work, his devotion to it assumed the character of a passion. The Morse's Patent Office Model of Magnet and Armature. umbia College, he went to call on Professor Morse on that memorable second of September, he was prepared not only to grasp the magnitude of the conception, but to understand perfectly the operation of the apparatus and the problems still awaiting solution. He says: "I saw this instrument work, and became thoroughly acquainted with the principles of its operation, and, I may say, struck with the rude machine, containing, as I believed, the germ of what was destined to produce great changes in the condition and relations of mankind." There were still doubts to be resolved; but in the end he decided to "embark in the enterprise," and "sink or swim with it." The enthusiasm of his son soon won over Judge Vail, and on September 23, 1837, an agreement was entered into between Professor Morse and Alfred Vail, by the terms of which Vail was to receive a one-fourth interest in the invention in the United States in return for his time and services for constructing at his own expense, and exhibiting before a Congressional Committee, one of the new telegraphs, and for procuring the necessary domestic patents. To explain the shoot planted by Professor Morse had sprung up in the young man's mind as an independent growth equal in strength and vigor to the original tree. If the conception had had its birth with Vail, he could not have taken more interest in its development. The elation and depression which alternated in his mind from time to time were intensely personal. It is doubtful if the history of these months, whilst Vail and young Baxter, a confidential assistant, were at work in their locked room at Speedwell, can be adequately explained except upon the hypothesis that the successes and failures were really Vail's, and not Morse's. The gradually changing relations of the two men, Vail's undefined feeling, which finally grew into expression, that Morse had not given him due public credit for his services, tell a story of natural jealousy on Morse's part, and of an outraged sense of justice on Vail's part, which, not having received its proper comedy denouement in a generous acknowledgment from Morse, has lately risen to do poetic justice of the retributive sort by exposing Morse's misde meanor. There remains barely space to catalogue the inventions by which Vail revolutionized the telegraph and made it practically what it is to-day. The first alteration which Vail made in the Morse machine was accomplished by substituting a fountain-pen for the recording pencil. This proving unsatisfactory, he hit upon the key to the whole trouble by dispensing with the pendulum, and using instead an armature lever having a vertical motion, so that it could be brought down upon the record strip instead of being carried across it. It was this invention more than any other which not only made the telegraph possible, but gave birth to nearly all the modern arts of signalling. The typical form of this magnet has a retractile spring normally pulling the pivoted armature away from the core, and adjustable front and back stops [for limiting the to-and-fro movement. In some form or other, it constitutes the translating medium in the most used systems of annunciators, alarms, and signals, and in every portion of the telegraph; and it is practically identical with the receiver of the telephone. This simple electro-mechanical movement enters as an element into the electrical arts with the same frequency as does the lever into the arts purely mechani which, being originated to serve the needs of the electric telegraph, has proved to be the means of givng inconceivably wider scope and capacity to systems that had been in existence thousands of years. When Vail made the alphabet, which is still known as the Morse Code, he expected to employ in transmitting it a "mechanical correspondent" constructed much like the Morse type-rule. But in actual practice, Vail learned to mark the necessary intervals by his inward sense of time, finding that he could operate perfectly by using his hand alone to control the dipping of the wires into the mercury cup. Still later he contructed a springs finger-key, which is the same in all essential particulars as that now in use. Mr. Franklin Leonard Pope, who was the first to set forth at length the true nature of Alfred Vail's services, pays appropriate tribute to the telegraphic alphabet in the following language: h m n Page's Electrostatic Coil. 1 The Morse Alphabet. - Combinations of dots and dashes give the different letters, numbers, and signs, and thus form the Morse alphabet: The letters thus formed of dots and dashes are separated by variable spaces as they are called. There are three kinds of spaces: the space separating the elements of a letter, that separating the letters of a word, and that separating the words themselves. These durations of break or silence are as necessary as the durations of contact or sound. "The grandeur of Vail's conception of an alphabetical code, based on the elements of time and space, has never met with the appreciation which it deserves. Its utility is not confined to electric telegraphy. It is used to signal, by intermittent flashes of light, between far distant signal stations of the Coast Survey, and between the different vessels of a fleet; it is sounded upon whistles and bells to convey intelligence to and from steamers cautiously feeling their way through the obscurity of fogs; and in fact, nearly every day brings to notice some new field of usefulness for this universal symbolic language. It appeals to almost every one of our senses, for it may be interpreted with almost equal facility by the sight, the touch, the taste, and the hearing. Indeed, with a charged electrical conductor and a knowledge of Vail's alphabetical code, then the transmitting and receiving instruments of the electric telegraph may be dispensed with in emergencies." We have seen that the pencil and the fountain-pen were alike objectionable as recording devices, and they were both ultimately superseded by a steel embossing point, beneath which was the strip of paper running over the grooved roller. In most cases where the alphabetic code is recorded to-day, the mechanism is substantially that last described, which Vail expressly claimed to have invented. The recording instrument used by Vail at Baltimore in 1844, and now at the National Museum in Washington, includes Vail's improvements both on the magnet and the recorder. But, as neither Morse nor Vail foresaw, the whole mechanism so carefully devised for recording the messages was soon discovered to be useless. Operators began to read by sound, as they still do, and the register under ordinary conditions fell into disuse. The telegraph which Morse set out to invent was a recording telegraph, and this he actually embodied in the working model of 1837. Thus much-and it is much-measures his claim as an inventor. The recording principle, first utilized by Harrison Gray Dyar, of New York, in 1827, is of importance in itself, and because it led to better things, but it is not an essential element of the modern telegraph. The key, the telegraphic alphabet, the electro-magnet with the spring-retracted armature, are due to Alfred Vail; the improved winding of the magnet is the result of Henry's labors; and many needed improvements in the batteries employed, are Professor Gale's; in a word, all the indispensable portions of the so-called Morse telegraph were suggested or invented by others. The most important of Vail's contributions, the alphabet and the improved electro-magnet, were completed and ready for service in an incredibly short period. He showed them working to his father, Jan. 6, 1838, and a few weeks later he erected a complete working apparatus, including them, at Columbia College. The performance of the improved telegraph there, and afterwards at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, was highly satisfactory to all concerned. The results of those preceding four months of labor are a tribute, which cannot well be overestimated, to the inventive genius of Alfred Vail. It will be a surprise to many to learn that the alphabetic code was not the production of Professor Morse. The code which Morse devised was numerical, every word in the English language being represented by a distinct number. The number being transmitted, the corresponding word could be found by reference a laboriously prepared telegraphic dictionary. It is needless to say that such a code was a practical absurdity. The struggles and disappointments of Morse and his associates between February, 1838, when Vail fulfilled his agreement to exhibit a telegraph to a Committee of Congress, to March 3, 1843, when, during the last hour of the session, a bill was passed appropriating thirty thousand. dollars to aid in establishing the enterprise, are better known to the public than the scientific facts and incidents. Morse was reduced to his last dollar, and the Vails were nearly discouraged. Even after the good fortune came, and the work on the experimental line from Washington to Baltimore was nearly completed, they were once more thrown into despair by finding that the insulation was worthless, and that twenty-three thousand dollars had been spent for naught. The wires were finally strung on poles and the historic message, "What hath God wrought!" was successfully transmitted on the 23d of May, 1844. Even here the fertility of Vail's invention was constantly exhibited. He discovered the axial magnet, and made working drawings of an ampère meter, in which its principle was to be utilized. He became an original, though not the first inventor of the automatic, vibrating circuit breaker. Other important improvements were devised by him to meet the exigencies of the work as it went along, marking him as an inventor of a very high order. paraphrased Hawthorne, by claiming that for many years at the cutset of his career he had enjoyed the distinction of being the obscurest man of science in America. The statement would be made more accurate by adding the Hibernianism that his obscurity was entirely transoceanic, and that Henry suffered in much the same way. The whole truth is that the Old World paid little attention in the thirties to what was going on in America. For, while many (American) writers agree in saying, that the researches of Henry in electro-magnetism gave him at once a world-wide fame, yet it remains to be explained why, so late as 1837, men like Wheatstone and Cooke were entirely ignorant of them, or quite unimpressed by them. Page was even more unfortunate. While a medical student in Salem, Mass., in 1836, he took up the induction apparatus of Faraday and subjected it during several years following to the most careful and exhaustive study. At the beginning, his object was to adapt the Faradic coil to the production of enhanced therapeutical effects. He soon learned, however, to take a scientific as well as a professional interest in his experiments. The discoveries and improvements which he made gave the induction coil its permanent form and well-nigh its present efficiency; yet nearly fifteen years later the results of his labors were appropriated by M. Ruhmkorff, a Paris instrument-maker, whose name is still attached descriptively to the invention of Page. Mr. Edward S. Ritchie, a Boston inventor, should be named in connection with Page for his improvements in the induction coil. Among other things it may be mentioned that Page first wound a secondary coil outside the primary, that he first produced all the phenomena of static electricity from the induced current, and that he first discovered the increased electro-static effects arising from giving the secondary a greater length than the primary. These are only a few of many alterations and discoveries, more or less fadical, which Page embodied in working apparatus. Incidentally, the necessity arose for an automatic circuitbreaker, and Page was actually the first Charles Grafton Page might have fitly to invent this device, which has since There is danger that a comparison of the sort which has been instituted may have resulted in an unjust reflection on Professor Morse. If this has been the case, the injustice must be set right. It may not be forgotten that the original conception of the electro-magnetic telegraph was Morse's, and that he actually constructed a working recording apparatus. It is true that the recording feature is now disused, but it is a question whether it did not play an important part in securing the interest of Congress, without which the whole scheme would have been a failure. Mistrustful as they still were, the members of the Congressional Committee would have been far more ready to suspect collusion, if an operator had professed to read by the mere sound of a metallic hammer a message sent by a distant "confederate." Regarded as a concrete embodiment of a natural principle, the modern telegraph is mainly Vail's and Henry's; regarded as a commercial enterprise to be "floated" or, better, regarded as a great idea permeated through and through with the imagination that "rules the world," the telegraph is distinctly Morse's and rightly bears his name. No better statement of the true position of Morse can be given in a few words than has been made by Mr. Charles L. Buckingham, in a recent article on "The Telegraph of To-day: " "The world has lost nothing, nor is it less to his credit, if parts of the invention which he esteemed most, have, like the false works of an arch, been removed. When they became an incumbrance their absence was as important as had been their presence, to give the structure its original shape and strength." been so widely applied in the electrical arts. We re-produce from a book which Page published in 1867, a cut of a form of coil he devised in April, 1838. The breaking of the circuit "is effected," says Page, by the attraction of a small piece of iron, g, by one end of the magnet, the iron being attached to a wire, e, suspended over a glass mercury cup, m, in such manner that the motion of the iron lifts the wire from the mercury and breaks the circuit." The circuit being thus broken, the magnetic attraction ceases, whereupon the displaced parts are restored and the same operation is repeated. A vibrating motion of the armature is produced in this way which is utilized in ordinary house-bells, and is popularly supposed to be the universal characteristic of the electric bell. The same principle underlies the action of the hammering devices now much used for attracting attention in shop windows. The part in the cut is an adjustable weight for regulating the resistance of the attraction of the core. . There appears also at ʼn a device for adjusting the distance between the armature and the core, a feature of great structural value, which was afterwards developed into the adjustable stops between which an electromagnet armature vibrates. This illustrates the principle of the Page circuit breaker, a different form of which he had originated some two years before. By placing above the mercury a sparkarresting layer of oil or water, Page came very near anticipating Fizeau's invention of a dozen years later, when by connecting up a condenser in the circuit, he put the final touch upon improvements in the Induction coil. Page afterwards distinguished himself by constructing an electric locomotor with which he drew a train of cars on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad between Washington and Bladensburg at a maximum rate of nineteen miles an hour. This was in 1851, after Congress had appropriated $30,000 to further the project. At this time Page was an examiner in the United States Patent Office, having entered it in 1841 as one of the two principal examiners then employed in the office. Page was so deeply interested For in the scheme of electric locomotion, and had so much faith in its future, that he withdrew from the Patent Office in 1852 in order that he might devote his whole time and attention to it. reasons which are now well understood, his hopes were destined to disappointment. Still he accomplished much, and succeeded in convincing a Senate Committee, of which Mr. Benton was Chairman, that electricity as a motive power had great possibilities which the Government ought to assist in developing. Before this Committee he exhibited a reciprocating electric engine which operated a planing machine. On another occasion he showed them an electric motor running a Napier printing-press at the rate of twelve hundred impressions an hour. But the appropriation which these experiments succeeded in calling forth from Congress was insufficient, necessarily, to accomplish the impossible. A friend of Professor Page's, who also witnessed many of the experiments referred to, as well as the trial on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, states the situation with tolerable exactness as it appeared to an intelligent observer writing before the perfection of the dynamo : "Although Professor Page failed to realize his first cherished hope of seeing electricity take the place of steam for a motive power on a large scale, for which he underwent so much labor, and for the pursuit of which he relinquished his hold upon a lucrative office, yet his labors had this result: the concentration within a moderate space, and by simple means, of a large amount of electromechanical power; and so soon as a galvanic battery shall be discovered which is easy to manage at the same time that it gives its current by the consumption of cheap materials, or as incidental to some extensive chemical manufacture, his engine is ready, we think, to perform a large part of the work done by the steam-engine. The central feature of Page's motor was the axial magnet which, as we have seen, was invented by Alfred Vail. While a principal examiner in the Patent Office, Page became Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department of Columbian College at Washington. In 1861, having found that his anticipations regarding the success of the electric motor were premature, he returned to the Patent Office and remained there till his death in 1868. As an examiner in the |