She then informed him that her father was present until the close, and, in the last moments of the session, the bill was passed without debate or revision.Professor Morse was overcome by the intelligence, so joyful and unexpected, and gave at the moment to his young friend, the bearer of these good tidings, the promise that she should send the first message over the first line of telegraph that was opened.**Prime, p.465.
Morse and his partners* then proceeded to the construction of the forty-mile line of wire between Baltimore and Washington.At this point Ezra Cornell, afterwards a famous builder of telegraphs and founder of Cornell University, first appears in history as a young man of thirty-six.Cornell invented a machine to lay pipe underground to contain the wires and he was employed to carry out the work of construction.The work was commenced at Baltimore and was continued until experiment proved that the underground method would not do, and it was decided to string the wires on poles.
Much time had been lost, but once the system of poles was adopted the work progressed rapidly, and by May, 1844, the line was completed.On the twenty-fourth of that month Morse sat before his instrument in the room of the Supreme Court at Washington.
His friend Miss Ellsworth handed him the message which she had chosen: "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT!" Morse flashed it to Vail forty miles away in Baltimore, and Vail instantly flashed back the same momentous words, "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT!"* The property in the invention was divided into sixteen shares (the partnership having been formed in 1838) of which Morse held 9, Francis O.J.Smith 4, Alfred Vail 2, Leonard D.Gale 2.In patents to be obtained in foreign countries, Morse was to hold 8shares, Smith 5, Vail 2, Gale 1.Smith had been a member of Congress and Chairman of the Committee on Commerce.He was admitted to the partnership in consideration of his assisting Morse to arouse the interest of European Governments.
Two days later the Democratic National Convention met in Baltimore to nominate a President and Vice-President.The leaders of the Convention desired to nominate Senator Silas Wright of New York, who was then in Washington, as running mate to James K.
Polk, but they must know first whether Wright would consent to run as Vice-President.So they posted a messenger off to Washington but were persuaded at the same time to allow the new telegraph to try what it could do.The telegraph carried the offer to Wright and carried back to the Convention Wright's refusal of the honor.The delegates, however, would not believe the telegraph, until their own messenger, returning the next day, confirmed its message.
For a time the telegraph attracted little attention.But Cornell stretched the lines across the country, connecting city with city, and Morse and Vail improved the details of the mechanism and perfected the code.Others came after them and added further improvements.And it is gratifying to know that both Morse and Vail, as well as Cornell, lived to reap some return for their labor.Morse lived to see his telegraph span the continent, and link the New World with the Old, and died in 1872 full of honors.
Prompt communication of the written or spoken message is a demand even more insistent than prompt transportation of men and goods.
By 1859 both the railroad and the telegraph had reached the old town of St.Joseph on the Missouri.Two thousand miles beyond, on the other side of plains and mountains and great rivers, lay prosperous California.The only transportation to California was by stage-coach, a sixty days' journey, or else across Panama, or else round the Horn, a choice of three evils.But to establish quicker communication, even though transportation might lag, the men of St.Joseph organized the Pony Express, to cover the great wild distance by riders on horseback, in ten or twelve days.
Relay stations for the horses and men were set up at appropriate points all along the way, and a postboy dashed off from St.
Joseph every twenty-four hours, on arrival of the train from the East.And for a time the Pony Express did its work and did it well.President Lincoln's First Inaugural was carried to California by the Pony Express; so was the news of the firing on Fort Sumter.But by 1869.the Pony Express was quietly superseded by the telegraph, which in that year had completed its circuits all the way to San Francisco, seven years ahead of the first transcontinental railroad.And in four more years Cyrus W.Field and Peter Cooper had carried to complete success the Atlantic Cable; and the Morse telegraph was sending intelligence across the sea, as well as from New York to the Golden Gate.
And today ships at sea and stations on land, separated by the sea, speak to one another in the language of the Morse Code, without the use of wires.Wireless, or radio, telegraphy was the invention of a nineteen-year-old boy, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian; but it has been greatly extended and developed at the hands of four Americans: Fessenden, Alexanderson, Langmuir, and Lee De Forest.It was De Forest's invention that made possible transcontinental and transatlantic telephone service, both with and without wires.
The story of the telegraph's younger brother, and great ally in communication, the telephone of Alexander Graham Bell, is another pregnant romance of American invention.But that is a story by itself, and it begins in a later period and so falls within the scope of another volume of these Chronicles.** "The Age of Big Business", by Burton J.Hendrick, "The Chronicle of America", vol.XXXIX.
