Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/466

426 mercury, J. The portrule represented below the table contained two cylinders connected by a band. M shows the composing-stick in which the type were set. At one end of the lever was a fork

of copper wire, which was plunged when the lever was depressed into the two cups of mercury J and K, while the other end was kept down by means of a weight. A series of thin plates of type metal, eleven in number, having one to five cous each, except one which was used as a space, completed the apparatus. His application for a patent, dated 28 Sept., 1837, was filed as a caveat at the U. S. patent-office, and in December of the same year he made a formal request of congress for aid to build a telegraph- line. The committee on commerce of the house of representatives, to which the petition had been re- ferred, reported favorably, but the session closed without any action being taken. Francis 0. J. Smith, of Maine, chairman of the committee, be- came impressed with the value of this new applica- tion of electricity, and formed a partnership with Mr. Morse. In May, 1838, Morse went to Europe in the hope of interesting foreign governments in the establishment of telegraph-lines, but he was unsuccessful in London. lie obtained a patent in France, but it was practically useless, as it required the inventor to put his discovery into operation within two years, and telegraphs being a govern- ment monopoly no private lines were permissible. Mr. Morse was received with distinction by scien- tists in each country, and his apparatus was ex- hibited under the auspices of the Academy of sci- ences in Paris, and the Royal society in London.

After an absence of eleven months he returned to New York in May. 1839, as he writes to Mr. Smith, " without a farthing in my pocket, and have to borrow even for my meals, and, even worse than this, I have incurred a debt of rent by my ab- sence." Pour years of trouble and almost abject poverty followed, and at times he was reduced to such want that for twenty-four hours he was without food. His only support was derived from a few students that he taught art, and occasional portraits that he was commissioned to paint. In the mean time, his foreign competitors — Wheat- stone in England, and Steinheil in Bavaria — were receiving substantial aid. and making efforts to- induce congress to adopt their systems in the United States, while Morse, struggling to per- suade his own countrymen of the merits of his sys- tem, although it was conceded by scientists to be the best, was unable to accomplish anything. He persisted in bringing the matter before congress after congress, until at last a bill granting him $30,000 was passed by the house on 23 Feb.'; 1842, by a majority of eight, the vote standing 90 to 82. On the last day of the session he left the capitol thoroughly disheartened, but found next morning^ that his bill had been rushed through the senate without division on the night of 3 March, 1843. There were yet many difficulties to be overcome, and with renewed energy he began to work. His intention was to place the wires in leaden pipes,, buried in the earth. This proved impracticable, and other methods were devised. Ezra Cornell {q. v.) then became associated with him, and was charged with the laying of the wires, and after various accidents it was ultimately decided to sus- pend the wires, insulated, on poles in the air. These difficulties had not been considered, as it was sup- posed that the method of burying the wires, which had been adopted abroad, would prove successful. Nearly a year had been exhausted in making experiments, and the congressional appropriation was nearly consumed before the system of poles was resorted to. The construction of the line between Baltimore and Washington, a distance of about forty miles, was quickly accomplished, and on 11 May, 1844. Mr. Morse wrote to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, '• Everything worked well." Among the earliest messages, while the line was still in an experimental condition, was one from Baltimore announcing the nomination of Henry Clay to the presidency by the Whig convention in that city. The news was conveyed on the railroad to the nearest point that had been reached by the telegraph, and thence instantly transmitted over the wires to Washington. An hour later passen- gers arriving at Washington were surprised to find that the news had preceded them. By the end of the month communication between the two cities was complete, and practically perfect. The day that was chosen for the public exhibition was 24 May, 1844, when Mr. Morse invited his friends to assemble in the chamber of the U. S. supreme court, in the capitol, at Washington, while his as- sistant, Mr. Vail, was in Baltimore, at the Mount Claire depot. Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, daughter of Henry L. Ellsworth, then commissioner of pat- ents, chose the words of the message. As she had been the first to announce to Mr. Morse the pas- sage of the bill granting the appropriation to build the line, he had pronused her this distinction. She- selected the words " What hath God wrought," taken from Numbers xxiii., 23. They were received at once by Mr. Vail, and sent back again in an in- stant. The strip of paper on which the telegraphic characters were printed was claimed by Gov. Thomas H. Seymour, of Connecticut, on the ground that Miss "Ellsworth was a native of Hartford, and is- now preserved in the archives by the Hartford athenasum. Two days later the national Demo- cratic convention met in Baltimore and nominated James K. Polk for the presidency. Silas Wright, of New York, was then chosen for the vice-presi- dency, and the information was immediately con- veyed by telegraph to Morse, and by him communi- cated to Mr. Wright, then in the senate chamber. A few minutes later the convention was astonished by receiving a telegram from Mr. Wright declining the nomination. The despatch was at once read