- A scientist named Joseph Henry, his friend Leonard Gale,
and a machinist named Alfred Vail invented the telegraph.
Then, a man named Samuel Morse put their ideas together
and gained the fame and profit.
He didn't do it for money, however.
His inspiration was a strange brew of ego,
xenophobia, and tragedy.
How can ego, xenophobia, and tragedy
lead to the invention of the telegraph?
Well, I'll tell you in the video.
Ready?
Let's go.
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- Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in 1791
to an upper-crust family in Charleston, Massachusetts.
Morse had two unconnected passions: painting and xenophobia,
both of which in a roundabout way
led him to the invention of the telegraph.
Let's start with painting.
When he was 19 years old,
he moved to Europe to study painting;
well, not really study as much as pontificate
on his genius at painting.
He wrote his mother that it wasn't enough
to be an excellent portrait painter.
No, he wanted to, "Revive the splendor of the 15th century
"to rival the genius of a Raphael,
"a Michelangelo, or a Titian."
Morse then spent the next 15 years in Europe and America
as a successful painter of portraits.
That's when tragedy struck.
In 1825, Morse got a commission
to travel to paint a portrait
of the American revolutionary hero Lafayette,
who was visiting the United States from France.
While working on the portrait,
Morse received the news by mail
that his young wife had fallen ill.
Although he immediately traveled to see her,
it was too late and she had already passed away.
This tragedy was Morse's first stimulus
to find a faster way to communicate.
Meanwhile, Morse worked on his other passion,
a virulent hatred of Catholics and Catholic immigrants.
He wrote pamphlets, gave speeches,
and unsuccessfully ran for mayor of New York
against this, "Cloven foot of foreign heresy."
Morse decided what was needed was for Protestants
to have a good way to communicate with each other
and thwart this menace.
In 1832, on a boat ride from Europe,
Morse was talking to another passenger about electromagnets
and was inspired to think of a system where the electricity
moves something electromagnetically as a signal.
Morse didn't know that he wasn't the first person
to have this idea.
In fact, it seemed like everyone
who heard of the electromagnet thought of the telegraph.
The electromagnet had been invented seven years earlier,
when an Englishman named William Sturgeon
determined that if you wrapped a wire around an iron bar,
when electricity flowed in the wires,
the bar would act like a magnet.
But when the electricity was cut,
the bar basically stopped being a magnet
and would no longer create a magnetic attraction.
This seemed like an obvious method
of sending signals long distances.
However, Sturgeon's electromagnet
was wrapped too loosely to make a telegraph
and would only transmit signals up to 200 feet.
Just before Morse went on that boat ride,
an American scientist named Joseph Henry
found that if you insulated the wire
and wrapped it very tightly around the iron,
you could create an incredibly powerful electromagnet.
He used it to lift over 2,000 pounds!
Henry also made a smaller electromagnet
that would ring a bell when electrified.
He powered that one over a mile away.
Henry wrote that his invention would be,
"Directly applicable for forming
"an electromagnetic telegraph."
Now, Morse didn't know about this
'cause he didn't think of doing any research.
He also had no scientific background.
However, Henry's work did end up helping Morse
eventually and significantly.
See, three years later, Morse got a job
as a professor of art at New York University.
Morse then started to work on his telegraph idea
on the side, but to no avail.
He then contacted a local science teacher
named Leonard Gale.
Gale was a friend of Joseph Henry's
and proceeded to teach Morse
how to make an effective electromagnet
from his understanding of Henry's work.
Morse had one more significant hurdle to his discovery.
See, if the wire is too long, the resistance is too high
and the current is too small to register at the other end.
He needed a way so that when the electricity
flowed in the wires, the electromagnet attraction
would flip a switch to close a new circuit
with a brand new battery.
In 1837, Morse once again turned to Leonard Gale,
who once again thought about Joseph Henry.
See, two years earlier,
Henry had made a spectacular demonstration
where he signaled a small electromagnet
from a battery very far distance away
and then used that electromagnet to flip a switch
to power a new battery
with a very strong local electromagnet.
Gale realized this was the electromagnetic switch
that they were looking for.
He then made a version of it called a relay
for Morse and his telegraph.
Morse felt that he had a working model
and filed for a patent.
At this time, he attracted the attention
of a mechanic named Alfred Vail.
Vail decided to work for Morse
and signed a contract for a percent of the future profits,
but where all related patents
would be, "Taken out in the name
"and for the exclusive benefit of Morse."
Vail then invented the telegraph key,
where, when you pressed it,
it closed the circuit to a battery.
And when you let it go, the circuit was broken.
Vail also set up the receiver
with a spinning paper and coils
that would punch a mark on the paper.
If you tapped down on the key for a second,
the paper would get a dot.
If you held it for longer,
it would get a long mark, or a dash.
Therefore, Vail made a code where each letter
was a combination of dots and dashes.
This is commonly called Morse code.
Meanwhile, Joseph Henry heard of Morse's "discoveries"
and wrote to a friend of his disgust
with Morse's charlatanism
for claiming the entire idea of the telegraph for himself.
Now, Joseph Henry did not want the money from the telegraph,
but he sure wanted the acknowledgement.
Then, in 1839, Leonard Gale went on vacation.
Not knowing Henry's irritation with him,
Morse sent Henry a letter asking for advice
for his telegraph, "As a learner, with no contributions
"to your stock of experiments of any value."
Henry was charmed.
He agreed to meet and attempted to help Morse
make a working telegraph system.
Meanwhile, Morse tried to get government funding.
He talked to Francis Smith, a congressman from Maine
and the chairman of the House Commerce Committee.
Morse and Smith decided that if the government funded Morse,
Smith could get a portion of Morse's company.
With that help of a friendly letter from Joseph Henry,
Smith wrote a bill
to give basically himself and Morse $30,000,
equivalent to about a million dollars today,
to build a telegraph line
between Washington, DC, and Baltimore.
On May 24th, 1844, Morse in Washington, DC,
signaled to Vail in Baltimore, "What hath God wrought."
Soon, Morse's telegraph was taking over the country.
However, he was also embroiled in lawsuit after lawsuit,
as people tried to profit off of his invention.
Joseph Henry was forced to participate
in some of these trials and said under oath
that he was, "Not aware that Mr. Morse
"has ever made a single original discovery
"applicable to the invention of the telegraph."
Incensed, Morse wrote a book
proclaiming that Henry did nothing
and that he was the sole originator
of all ideas of the telegraph.
After that, he downplayed or erased
all of Henry's accomplishments
and all of Alfred Vail's accomplishments as well.
Meanwhile, Alfred Vail did not complain,
as he felt his contract with Morse
meant that his ideas were basically Morse's property.
He couldn't patent anything anyway,
and Morse had come up with the original idea.
He was also good friends with Morse
and felt their friendship was important,
as was the, "Peaceful unity of the invention."
Vail worked on telegraphs for four more years,
but then he felt he wasn't appreciated and quit.
He wrote Morse that, "I've made up my mind
"to leave the telegraph to take care of itself
"since it can't take care of me."
He died 10 years later, nearly destitute.
On the other hand, despite all of the lawsuits,
Morse retired with a ridiculous amount of money.
He then spent his free time arguing as a Northerner
for the joys of slavery,
describing the master-slave relationship as,
"The most beautiful example of domestic happiness
"and contentment that this fallen world knows."
Ironically, since the telegraph
increased long-distance communication,
it helped with the influx of immigrants
and helped abolitionists spread the news
about the horrors of slavery.
Meanwhile, Henry became the first director
of the Smithsonian Institute
and was known as America's premier scientist.
Politically, Henry went the opposite way of Morse,
was strongly anti-slavery,
and was a personal friend of Lincoln.
Henry didn't like to talk about Morse
and the telegraph much, but he did once say,
"If I could live my life again,
"I might've taken out more patents."
The telegraph was transformative,
but what really brought electricity in our lives
was finding a way to generate electricity from motion
instead of from the chemicals in a battery.
This too in a way started with a discovery
in 1830 by Joseph Henry.
See, when Henry was first
playing with coils of electromagnets,
he noticed something strange.
When one coil was connected to a battery,
a completely separate coil would get a jolt of current.
He had discovered induction.
Henry took some time to publish, as he was busy teaching.
And meanwhile, his English doppelganger,
Michael Faraday, discovered the same thing.
Faraday then took it to the next level
and used that discovery to invent the first generator
and the idea of magnetic fields,
and that story is next time
on "The Secret History of Electricity."
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- Thanks for watching my video.
Please give it a nice thumbs-up,
make sure to check out the last one on Joseph Henry,
and the next one on Michael Faraday.
Have a good day!
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