Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - Volume II | Page 6

to call attention to a point which has never, to my knowledge, been noticed before. In the message, which, in pursuance of his first idea, adhered to by him for several years, was to be sent by means of numbers, every word is numbered conventionally except the proper name "Cuvier," and for this he put a number for each letter. How this was to be indicated was not made clear, but it is evident that he saw at once that all proper names could not be numbered; that some other means must be employed to indicate them; in other words that each letter of the alphabet must have its own sign. Whether at that early period he had actually devised any form of alphabet does not appear, although some of the depositions of his fellow passengers would indicate that he had. He himself put its invention at a date a few years after this, and it has been bitterly contested that he did not invent it at all. I shall prove, in the proper place, that he did, but I think it is proved that it must have been thought of even at the early date of 1832, and, at all events, the dot-and-dash as the basis of a conventional code were original with Morse and were quite different from any other form of code devised by others.
The next drawing of a magnet lifting sixty pounds shows that Morse was familiar with the discoveries of Arago, Davy, and Sturgeon in electro-magnetism, but what application of them was to be made is not explained.
The last sketch is to me the most important of all, for it embodies the principle of the receiving magnet which is universally used at the present day. The weak permanent magnet has been replaced by a spring, but the electro-magnet still attracts the lever and produces the dots and dashes of the alphabet; and this, simple as it seems to us "once found," was original with Morse, was absolutely different from any other form of telegraph devised by others, and, improved and elaborated by him through years of struggle, is now recognized throughout the world as the Telegraph.
It was not yet in a shape to prove to a skeptical world its practical utility; much had still to be done to bring it to perfection; new discoveries had still to be made by Morse and by others which were essential to its success; the skill, the means, and the faith of others had to be enlisted in its behalf, but the actual invention was there and Morse was the inventor.
How simple it all seems to us now, and yet its very simplicity is its sublimest feature, for it was this which compelled the admiration of scientists and practical men of affairs alike, and which gradually forced into desuetude all other systems of telegraphy until to-day the Morse telegraph still stands unrivalled.
That many other minds had been occupied with the same problem was a fact unknown to the inventor at the time, although a few years later he was rudely awakened. A fugitive note, written many years later, in his handwriting, although speaking of himself in the third person, bears witness to this. It is entitled "Good thought":--
"A circumstance which tends to confuse, in fairly ascertaining priority of invention, is that a subsequent state of knowledge is confounded in the general mind with the state of knowledge when the invention is first announced as successful. This is certainly very unfair. When Morse announced his invention, what was the general state of knowledge in regard to the telegraph? It should be borne in mind that a knowledge of the futile attempts at electric telegraphs previous to his successful one has been brought out from the lumber garret of science by the research of eighteen years. Nothing was known of such telegraphs to many scientific men of the highest attainments in the centres of civilization. Professor Morse says himself (and certainly he has not given in any single instance a statement which has been falsified) that, at the time he devised his system, he supposed himself to be the first person that ever put the words 'electric telegraph' together. He supposed himself at the time the originator of the phrase as well as the thing. But, aside from his positive assertion, the truth of this statement is not only possible but very probable. The comparatively few (very few as compared with the mass who now are learned in the facts) who were in the habit of reading the scientific journals may have read of the thought of an electric telegraph about the year 1832, and even of Ronald's, and Betancourt's, and Salva's, and Lomond's impracticable schemes previously, and have forgotten them again, with thousands of other dreams, as the ingenious ideas