Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [149]
Even worse, O’Reilly charged, Morse had conned the government into granting him ownership of a force in nature, a so-called general principle. Contemporary patent law was ambiguous on the question of whether an inventor could patent the general application of a natural force, or only a specific application of it embodied in some machine. Morse’s patent claimed “the use of the motive power” of electromagnetism “as a means of operating or giving motion to machinery, which may be used … in any desired manner for the purpose of telegraphic communication.” As O’Reilly interpreted this for the public, it meant that Morse had pilfered exclusive right to a “general principle.” “If this general principle could be patented,” he jeered, “please lose no time in applying for Patent Rights for your Schuyl-Kill water running down a man’s throat so glibly when aided by a little Coniac [sic].”
The press and public debated the “general principle” issue. A writer to the Troy, New York, Daily Post, for instance, took up and reinforced O’Reilly’s indictment:
Suppose a man who had obtained a patent for a water wheel to propel machinery, were to set up the claim that no one could use water to propel machinery by any kind of wheel subsequently invented, though it might differ from his in every particular, would not even Mr. Morse treat with contempt so absurd and preposterous a claim; and yet, is it more preposterous than his attempts to monopolize Electro Magnetism….
The editor of another paper compared Morse and his associates to hucksters, “venders of wooden nutmegs, proclaiming that everything else except their wares are humbug and frauds! As if the laws of Electro-Magnetism have not an infinite variety of application!”
Morse answered the attack on his patent point by point. He assured the public that he asserted no exclusive right to electromagnetism, but only to its use in transmitting and recording intelligence over long distances. As the fight over legal terms raged on, however, O’Reilly made new deals, built new lines, and enjoyed new triumphs. In August 1847 his poles reached Cincinnati. By late December, thrillingly, they stood opposite St. Louis, on the east branch of the great river: “Thank Heaven! The Mississippi is now reached,” he exulted; “Hurra for the ‘Atlantic, Lake & Mississippi’ Line—visionary as people once tho’t it!” He applied to the corporation of the city for permission to erect posts in town, determined to march on to Louisville.
O’Reilly paid a price for his victories. At one point he had not seen his wife and seven children in Albany for thirteen months: “there is no person on our whole lines who suffers, deeply suffers, as I do,” he told a friend. Even when one of his sons became seriously ill, “pining away to a skeleton,” he felt too swept up to return home: “I can hardly write to the family, much less be with them.” Each day’s progress, too, meant overcoming the same heap of problems that confronted Morse’s companies—how to interest investors, cross bodies of water, deal with shipping delays and snapped wires. A friend noticed that the struggle had worn on him, “changed your usually warm & generous disposition to a somewhat more bitter & less generous condition.”
To Morse it seemed that O’Reilly meant not only to defraud but also to torment him. “It cannot but be painful to witness the vindictiveness with which I have been personally assailed, and the reckless manner in which my patent has been denounced.” It depressed him to think that in leaving his painting career to become an inventor, he had simultaneously won applause and contempt, fame and disgrace.