![Transcription Center logo](/themes/custom/tc_theme/assets/image/logo.png)
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
PROFESSOR MORSE AND THE TELEGRAPH 587 G O D thus links her name with his own, and with an invention which becomes one of the controlling instruments of civilization for all time. The first public messages sent were a notice to Silas Wright, in Washington, of his nomination for the office of Vice-President of the United States by the Democratic Convention, then (May, 1844) in session in Baltimore, and his response declining it. Hon. Hendrick B. Wright, in a letter to the author of this sketch, says: "As the presiding officer of the body, I read the despatch; but so incredulous were the members as to the authority of the evidence before them, that the Convention adjourned over to the following day, to await the report of a committee sent over to Washington to get reliable information upon the subject." Such were the circumstances attending the birth of the Electro-Magnetic Recording Telegraph. The ingenuity of man had fashioned a body for it; but there it lay, with all its perfections undreamed of, excepting by a few prophetic philosophers,——its mighty powers all unknown,——almost as lifeless and useless as a rock in the wilderness, until Morse, divinely inspired, as he always believed, endowed it with intelligence. The poet said concerning the discoveries of Newton, which dispelled so much of the darkness which hung around the truths of science, "God said, Let Newton live, and all was Light." With equal truth may Morse be ranked among the creative agencies of God upon the earth. The infant of his conception, so ridiculed and distrusted, immediately gave signs of its divinity. The doubters were soon ready to bring garlanded bulls to sacrifice to it as a god; and a prophet wrote: "What more, presumptuous mortals, will you dare? See Franklin seize the Clouds, their bolts to bury; The Sun assigns his pencil to Daguerre, And Morse the lighting makes his secretary!" He stood before the world as the peer of Kings and Emperors, for the application of his thought to exquisite mechanism revolutionized the world. And kings and emperors soon delighted to pay homage to his genius by substantial tokens. The Sultan of Turkey was the first monarch who recognized Professor Morse as a public benefactor, by bestowing upon him the decoration of the Nishan Iftichar, or Order of Glory. That was in 1848, the same year when his Alma Mater conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. The Kings of Prussia and Würtemberg and the Emperor of Austria each gave him a Gold Medal of Scientific Merit, that of the first named being set in a massive gold snuffbox. In 1856, the Emperor of the French bestowed upon him the Cross of a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. The next year the Cross of Knight Commander of the First Class in the Order of the Dannebroge was presented to him by the King of Denmark, and in 1858 the Queen of Spain gave him the Cross of the Knight Commander (de numero) of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. The King of Italy gave him the Cross of the Order of SS. Maurice and Lazarus, and the Sovereign of Portugal presented him with the Cross of the Order of the Tower and Sword. In 1858, a special congress was called by the Emperor of the French to devise a suitable testimonial of the nation to Professor Morse. Representatives from ten sovereignties convened at Paris under the presidency of County Walewski, then the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, and by a unanimous vote they gave, in the aggregate, four hundred thousands francs ($80,000) as "an honorary gratuity to Professor Morse," a "collective act, to demonstrate the sentiments of public gratitude justly excited by his invention." The States which participated in this testimonial were France, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Piedmont, the Holy See, Tuscany, and Turkey. Like all useful inventions, Morse's recording telegraph found competitors for honors and emoluments. Its own progress in securing public confidence was at first slow. In 1846 House's letter-printing telegraph was brought out, and in 1849 Bain introduced electro-chemical telegraphy. Rival lines were established. Costly litigations ensued, which promised, at one time, to demand more money than the income from the inven-