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Morse asked Rives and Fisher whether either of them had remarked, as Jackson alleged, that “It would be well if we could send news in the same rapid manner.” He also asked Captain Pell, “Was there on board ship any other person than myself the inventor of the Telegraph?” Their responses were heartening. Rives and Fisher both disowned the remark: “such a conception had never entered my mind,” Rives said; “it was a complete novelty to me when first presented to my contemplation by your conversations.” Pell admitted that he could not remember every conversation about the telegraph during the voyage, but one impression stayed with him forcefully: “you only on board of that ship was the originator … your mind alone seemed interested in it with any seriousness of purpose, even after its first suggestion by you.”

In sum, Morse denied that he was indebted to Jackson in any way—“for any single hint of any kind whatever which I have used in my invention.” He did however owe to Jackson some of his thinking about telegraphs, how much is uncertain. Jackson was one of the few Americans acquainted with current European research in electricity and magnetism, of which Morse knew nothing. Jackson’s assertion that he made rough drawings of electrical apparatus for Morse is substantiated by Morse’s sketches of an electromagnet, an electrical generator, and similar devices in the Sully sketchbook. Such unacknowledged influence may explain another suspicious matter. As noted earlier, Jackson’s name appears in the heading of Morse’s first circular letter, asking fellow passengers to confirm that he had thought up an electric telegraph in 1832, years before the outburst of comparable European inventions. Jackson later contended, correctly it seems, that Morse never sent him the circular, as if aware that his reply would be damaging.

On the other hand, whatever Morse may have learned from Jackson, the design of the cumbrous but effective port-rule and register was his own, evolved over five years. And the co-creator of “Morse’s Patent Metallic Double-Headed OCEAN-DRINKER and DELUGE-SPOUTER VALVE Pump-Boxes” was not exactly a stranger to technology. Some of the bitterness between the two men arose from their shared conception of the Lone Inventor, creating ex nihilo from his lofty imagination, an ideal in Morse’s case reinforced by his imperious conception of The Painter, independent of all ties to patrons. This dubious notion—to look ahead—would bedevil Morse the rest of his life, burdening him with neverending disputes that many times multiplied the entire days he must have spent trying to refute Jackson. And the brilliant Jackson’s account of what he told Morse would become ever more suspect as his craving for celebrity led him to appropriate other inventions and discoveries.

If nothing else, Morse’s set-to with Jackson was instructive. “The condition of an inventor,” he had found out, “is, indeed, not enviable.” To protect his rights and the further development of his work, he applied in October 1837 to the Commissioner of Patents in Washington, Henry L. Ellsworth, a friend and Yale classmate. He said he wished to have a caveat. This document granted statutory protection to an inventor’s claim of priority, even before his work was matured enough to be patented. If the inventor did not file a patent within a year, he forfeited the protection. Morse’s application described in detail what was now his invention-in-progress—port-rule, register, numbered dictionary, the elements of “a new method of transmitting and recording intelligence by means of Electro-magnetism.”

The application and Morse’s $20 fee secured him a caveat for the improbable-looking composing stick and canvas stretcher he chose to call the “American Electro Magnetic Telegraph.”

Engrossed now in his invention, Morse set out to substantially improve the apparatus and demonstrate it to the public. He sought the advice of a scientific colleague at New York University, Professor Leonard D. Gale, author of Elements of