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Morse took on additional work at the International Exposition. He accepted a federal appointment to the show as Honorary Commissioner of the American government. This involved writing a substantial report for the State Department on the telegraph display. He and his family watched the opening grand review of the French army from the Emperor’s own gallery—an unbeatable view of the 60,000 Zouaves, grenadiers, and foot soldiers colorfully defiling below. Afterward they mingled at a reception given by the City of Paris at the Hôtel de Ville for visiting dignitaries, including Bismarck and the King of Prussia, awesomely lighted by 70,000 candles.

Morse had plenty of company at the Exposition. Between April and October 1867 the fair drew over six million spectators. They included the crowned heads of state large and small—“as much of this world’s glory,” he said, “as has been seen in one spot since Solomon’s time.” The fairground stood on the Champs de Mars, in easy walking distance of his house, pennants everywhere flying from tall poles. The vast exhibition building was laid out as seven concentric iron, brick, and glass ovals, something like nested racetracks. Inside, the various national pavilions offered thousands of displays of arts and industry—“the world in epitome,” Morse said. Despite the overtones of a universal common bond—the gold prize medals were stamped “Social Harmony”—some criticized the Exposition as vulgarly materialistic and socially conservative. Little could be seen there of the hordes of urban poor, the quite other Paris of ragpickers, beggars, and teenaged prostitutes. Emile Zola called the event an “extravaganza of lies.”

Morse however found it all intensely interesting, not least the strong showing of Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Church, John Frederick Kensett, and other American painters in the art section. He also reported to Sidney on the display of the “Morse Bathometer” his brother had invented, though with discouraging news about its reception. Mostly he inspected the huge array of telegraphic apparatus laid out by seventy-five exhibitors—transmitters, receivers, batteries, magnets, insulation, and the like submitted by inventors and manufacturers not only from Europe, America, and Great Britain but also from Scandinavia, Turkey, Egypt, and Russia.

Press reaction to the display of recently invented telegraphs was divided. One French newspaper remarked that the new devices “function satisfactorily, but can’t supplant Morse.” Contrarily, the Paris Moniteur observed that years earlier Morse’s telegraph would have dominated the Exposition, but no longer did. “Ce n’est sans doute plus qu’un roi détrôné”—the Morse system is now nothing more than an overthrown king. For himself, Morse saw in the new instruments nothing so much as the features of his own. He could pass by scarcely any of them, he said, “that I do not hear the cry of father.”

Morse attended the award ceremony at the close of the Exposition, held before 20,000 persons including the Emperor, the Sultan of Turkey, and the Prince of Wales. In the telegraph section, one Grand Prize went to Cyrus Field for his transatlantic cable. Morse felt a fresh pang of resentment and exclusion when another Grand Prize went to the Kentucky music teacher David Hughes, for an improved version of his piano-like printing telegraph—the device that Field’s company had threatened to use in competition with Morse lines. “Many of my friends,” Morse commented, “think I ought to have received some prize of the kind as the original Inventor of the Recording Telegraph.” Adept at preserving his pride, however, he reasoned that he had received a “ Grander Prize” in his indemnity from the nations of Europe, and the provisional adoption of his system on all international lines. “An Honorary notice would of course [have] been agreeable, but in my case would be supererogatory.”

Getting started on his report to the State Department, Morse obtained a catalog of all the telegraphic apparatus and supplies at the