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By Root 1465 0

from Congress for an experimental line. He began, in January, by seeking testimonials to send on to Washington. He wrote to Professor Joseph Henry, whom he had visited at Princeton, asking for “a letter expressive of your views.” Henry returned a solid recommendation. He commented that the time was ripe for the telegraph and that he preferred Morse’s to Wheatstone’s or Steinheil’s: “I have not the least doubt, if proper means be afforded, of the perfect success of the invention.”

Morse wrote the same month to several congressmen asking their help. A few expressed vague interest or doubt. But a member from Connecticut, William W. Boardman, agreed in effect to reintroduce Morse’s petition. In February he placed before the House a resolution calling on the Commerce Committee to “inquire into the expediency of establishing a system of electro-magnetic telegraph for the use of the Government of the United States.” The Committee would not address the issue for months, and meanwhile Boardman advised Morse to publicize the cause: “It may be worth while to keep the matter before the public eye, and excite an interest in it.”

To create a stir that might impress Congress, Morse prepared a new series of public demonstrations. He built several improved instruments, and experimented again to work out problems in transmitting over long lines. “I retire early and am up early and at work again so that days weeks and I find even months have slipped by almost unconsciously.” He devised a new battery, “the most powerful of its size ever invented,” he claimed, and succeeded in passing a usable current through thirty-three miles of wire.

Morse exhibited his system in New York City throughout the summer and early fall, reaping much new notice in the press. Journalists from the Tribune witnessed one trial. They wrote a rhapsodic account for the paper, calling the apparatus “among the most wonderful and, prospectively, the most useful applications of science to the great purposes of life which the present age has seen.” Most important, they asked Congress to immediately grant Morse the appropriation. Several weeks later Morse performed before a committee of scientists from the American Institute. The committee’s report, reprinted in the press, concluded that the instrument was admirably adapted to sending long-distance messages at high speed—“a most important practical application of high science, brought into successful operation by the exercise of much mechanical skill and ingenuity.”

The Institute awarded Morse a gold medal, and chose to include his apparatus in its annual fair at Niblo’s Garden. At this exposition of American progress in manufactures, agriculture, and invention, New Yorkers could see Morse’s system in operation all day. Reviewing the fair on its front page, the Herald predicted that his telegraph would prove “the great invention of the age,” and expressed pleasure in hearing that Congress might underwrite a large-scale test of it.

Morse gained sensational publicity, most of it unwelcome, in teaming up with twenty-eight-year-old Samuel Colt (1814–1862). Colt had received a patent for his famed revolver, the first multi-shot firearm. But he was struggling financially and personally, his gun company having gone bankrupt and his brother, convicted of murder, having committed suicide. He and Morse met at New York University, where Colt had a laboratory sponsored by the Navy Department. Colt experimented there with methods of detonating gunpowder underwater by electricity, in effect creating an arsenal of undersea mines to destroy enemy ships and defend American harbors. What interested Morse were Colt’s attempts to transmit electrical currents through water—a difficulty that had to be overcome if the telegraph was to work across the nation’s rivers. They shared wire and other equipment and commiserated on problems of getting financial support.

In October, Morse joined Colt for a two-day demonstration off Castle Garden, in New York harbor. From a galvanic battery on the U.S. brig Washington, Colt lay underwater cable to a ship