Part 95

But before the much greater practical value of Volta’s current was discovered, one man developed a real telegraph which worked with electricity of the static kind, produced by friction. This man was named Sir Francis Ronalds. He worked along the lines laid down by the unknown Scotchman, whom we have supposed to be Charles Morrison. The machine he built and operated in his garden at Hammersmith utilized pith balls, which actuated by the charge of static electricity sent along the wire caused a letter to appear before an opening in the dial. When perfected he offered it to the British Government, who refused it. They were very stupid in their refusal, for they said “telegraphs are wholly unnecessary.” Sir Francis Ronalds’ invention cost him much care, anxiety and money. He lived to see the more practical voltaic current taken up by others and put to successful use. Being unselfish he rejoiced that others should succeed where he had failed.

Two Men who Invented our Telegraph almost Simultaneously.

The telegraph, working on the electro-magnetic principle, as used to-day, was developed almost simultaneously on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In England Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke worked out a practical method and instruments, which with few changes, are in use to-day. Cooke was a doctor and had served with the British army in India. Wheatstone was the son of a Gloucester musical instrument maker. The latter was fond of science and experimented continually with electricity and wrote about it and other scientific subjects. As a result of his work he was made a professor at King’s College. There he conducted important researches and tests, among which was one which measured the speed at which electricity travels along a wire. So Cooke, who was a doctor and a good business man, entered into partnership with the scientist Wheatstone, and together they completed their invention. It was first used in 1838 on the London and Blackwall Railway. At first it was expensive and cumbersome, using five lines of wire. Later this number was reduced to two, and in 1845, an instrument was devised which required but one wire. This instrument, with a few minor changes, is the one in use to-day in England.

While these two men were working in England, an American artist, S. F. B. Morse, was studying and experimenting in the United States along his own lines but with the same end in view, namely to produce instruments which would satisfactorily send messages over a wire by electricity.

An American, however, is given the honor of First by Slight Margin.

Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1791. He was gifted as an artist, both in painting and sculpture, and in 1811 went abroad to England to study. While on a voyage from Havre to America in 1832 he met on board ship a Dr. Jackson, who told him of the latest scientific discoveries in regard to the electric current and the electro-magnet. This set Morse to thinking and after three years’ hard work on the problem he produced a telegraph which worked on the principle of the electro-magnet. With the apparatus devised by Morse and his partner Alfred Vail, a message was sent from Washington to Baltimore in 1844.

There has been some question as to whether Morse or Wheatstone first invented a workable telegraph. As will be evident from this history, the telegraph in principle was a gradual development, to which many minds contributed. To Morse, however, the high authority of the Supreme Court of the United States has given the credit of being the first to perfect a practical instrument, saying that the Morse invention “preceded the three European inventions” and that it would be impossible to examine the latter without perceiving at once “the decided superiority of the one invented by Professor Morse.”

Uncle Sam Helped Build the First Telegraph Line.

~FIRST TELEGRAPH LINE FROM BALTIMORE TO WASHINGTON~

At the time Morse’s Recording Telegraph was invented there were, of course, no telegraph lines in any part of the world, with the exception of the short lines of wire put up by investigators for experimental purposes. To remove the obscurity as to the purpose to be served by the telegraph was the first problem which presented itself to Morse and his backers. In 1843 an appropriation was secured of $30,000 from the U. S. Government, with which a line was built from Washington to Baltimore. This was built and operated by the Government for about two years, but the Government refused to purchase the patent rights. So the owners of the patents endeavored to get the general public interested in the telegraph as a commercial undertaking and gradually companies were founded and licensed to use the invention.

By 1851 there were as many as fifty different telegraph companies in operation in different parts of the United States. A few of these used the devices of a man named Alexander Bain, which were afterwards adjudged to infringe the Morse patents, and one or two used an instrument invented by Royal E. House of Vermont, which printed the messages received in plain Roman letters on a ribbon of paper. This at first seemed to have an advantage over that of Morse, which received the message in dots and dashes, in the Morse Code, and these had to be translated and written out by an operator before they could be delivered. However, as time went on, the operators came to read the Morse messages by the sound of the dots and dashes, instead of waiting to read the paper tape having the dots and dashes marked on it, and finally the recording feature was given up and the sounder, or instrument which simply clicks out the message, came into general use.

In the early days, the possibility of the business were little understood and many telegraph companies failed. April 8, 1851, papers were filed in Albany for the incorporation of the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Co. This company, which soon afterwards changed its name to Western Union, was destined to absorb the various companies throughout the country until it, in time, operated the telegraph lines over practically the entire United States, and has its blue sign in nearly every town and hamlet in the country.

OPERATING ROOM.

In large cities like New York and Chicago, the operating rooms are very large. For instance, the main operating department of the Western Union Telegraph Co. in New York City has 1000 operators. This picture shows an operating room. The men and women sit in opposite sides of long tables. On the tables are the keys and sounders by which they send and receive the messages. Each operator has a typewriter, or “mill,” as he calls it, on which he writes off the message as it comes to him over the wire.]

The picture shows a main switchboard in a large operating room. To this come the ends of the wires from other cities, and to it are connected the wires from the instruments in front of the operators. By putting plugs, attached to each end of a wire, into the sockets in the board, any wire can be connected with any operating position, or several local circuits can be connected up with a main line from the outside.]

A SECTION OF THE REPEATER ROOM.

When a wire runs to a distant point from the main operating department of the telegraph company in a large city, the same electric current which runs through the key of the operator as he sits at his place, busily sending messages, does not go out over the wire to that distant point. It simply goes to the repeater room and operates a repeater, which sends out another current over the long wire which leads to the destination of the message. This is necessary because the condition of the weather affects the lines and the current strength has to be changed to suit the changing line conditions. The operators haven’t time to make these adjustments, and so all the repeaters are grouped together in the repeater room where they are under the watchful eyes of experts. Here also are the delicate instruments which separate the messages coming over duplex and quadruplex wires, by responding to impulses of various strengths. These messages which have been separated are then transmitted by the duplex or quadruplex repeaters to different operators in the operating room, who hear their sounders tick out the message just the same as if it came over a simple Morse wire.]

You may not but your father will remember the time when in large cities there were tall telegraph poles with hundreds of wires on them running along the main streets, so that the town seemed to be bound with great spiders’ web. That is all changed now, and the telegraph wires are run through ducts, placed underground. For this purpose they are made up in cables, and in the picture you see a number of cables entering a central office.]

WHEATSTONE SENDING INSTRUMENT.

These two photographs show the most modern form of the instruments which, as we are told on another page, were invented in England by Wheatstone and Cooke. In sending a paper tape is punched in what is called a perforator, which has a keyboard like a typewriter. A certain combination of holes means a certain letter. This tape is then automatically fed through the sending instrument, which sends impulses over the wire. The tape with the holes punched through it can be seen in the picture.

On the right is the Wheatstone receiving instrument. It prints the signals received in dots and dashes on a tape, which is translated by the operator who typewrites the translation on a message blank for delivery.]

On this page we see some of the first telegraph instruments, in fact, the very instruments which Professor Morse used in the early demonstrations of his invention. These instruments may be seen in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D. C. The key is known as the Vail key, because it is supposed to have been constructed by Alfred Vail, who worked with Morse in his experiments with the telegraph. As can be seen it is very simple. One wire was connected to the spring piece and the other to the post beneath it. When the key was pressed down, the contact was made and an impulse sent over the wire, either a dot, if the key was pressed down and immediately released, or a dash if it were held down for just the fraction of a second before releasing.

From the very first it was found that relays were necessary, because the current after coming a long way over the wire often was not strong enough to operate the recording instrument. Therefore, this weak current was made to go though the electro-magnets of the relay, magnetizing these and pulling to the left the upright arm which can be seen in the photograph with a little block of iron attached to it. This arm, when pulled by the magnets, made a contact at the top and allowed a strong current from a battery to flow through the magnets of the recording instrument.

The first practical recording telegraph instrument devised by Morse is shown. It looks like a clumsy affair compared to the instruments of to-day, but it worked so effectively as to convince people of the possibilities of the great invention. In the wooden box, attached to the frame at the right, is clockwork which pulled a paper tape at an even rate of speed over a pulley just beneath a needle point. This needle point is attached to a light framework having a piece of iron fastened in it. Below this iron are the electro-magnets, and when they received an impulse of current from the battery, through the relay, they pulled down the frame so that the point made a mark upon the paper tape which moved under it. Thus in the tape appeared a series of dots and dashes, which the operator, knowing the Morse Code, could easily translate into English.

ONE OF THE FIRST KEYS FOR SENDING TELEGRAMS.]

A LATER KEY.]

Here we see some early telegraph instruments which have been improved somewhat from the crude devices illustrated on the preceding page. The key answers the same purpose as before, but has been improved by pivoting the lever arm, and having a coil spring, adjustable by means of a screw, so that the weight necessary to press it down can be varied to suit the likings of the operator who uses it. The play of the key or the distance it must be pressed down before it makes an electric contact, can be adjusted by another screw.

The recording instrument here shown is a much neater affair than the cumbersome device which Professor Morse first built. The cumbersome wooden box has been replaced with a neat brass frame containing the clockwork for drawing the paper tape beneath the marking point, which is attached to a piece of iron, or armature, placed just above the magnet.