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Updated: May 31, 2025
The chief of these was Alfred Vail, a name until lately almost unknown to scientific fame, who eliminated the clumsy crudities of Morse's conception, remade his instruments, and was the inventor of that renowned alphabet which spells without letters or writing or types, that may be seen or heard or felt or tasted, that is adapted to any language and to all conditions, and that performs to this day, and shall to all time, the miracle of causing the inane rattle of pieces of metal against each other to speak to even a careless listener the exact thoughts of one a thousand miles away.
Although very much interested in the undertaking, he was entirely ignorant of the principles involved in it, and, therefore, very apprehensive of its failure. It was upon this occasion that he asked one of Professor Morse's assistants how large a bundle could be sent over the wires, and if the United States mail could not be sent in the same way.
The child was at first very delicate, and this added to the anxieties of the fond mother and father, but he soon outgrew his childish ailments. Morse's active mind was ever bent on invention, and in this year he devised and sought to patent a machine for carving marble statues, "perfect copies of any model."
I was told he was no true Quaker; for, although a noisy, brawling hanger-on at their meetings, he is not in fellowship with the more sober and discreet of that people. Rebecca writes me that the witchcraft in William Morse's house is much talked of; and that Caleb Powell hath been complained of as the wizard. Mr.
Estimate of West. Alarming state of affairs in England. Assassination of Perceval, Prime Minister. Execution of assassin. Morse's love for his art. Stephen Van Rensselaer. Leslie the friend and Allston the master. Afternoon tea. The elder Morse well known in Europe. Lord Castlereagh. The Queen's drawing-room. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. Zachary Macaulay. Warning letter from his parents. War declared.
Morse's first idea, adhered to by him until found by experience, in the building of the first line between Washington and Baltimore, to be impracticable, had been to bury the wires in a trench in the ground. I say it was found to be impracticable, but that is true only of the conditions at that early date.
In a surge of momentary insanity he saw red. The barrel of his revolver rose swiftly. A bullet sang past Morse's ear. Before he could fire again, Harvey Gosse had flung himself on the man and wrested the weapon from his hand. Hard-eyed and motionless, Morse looked down at the madman without saying a word. It was Beresford who said ironically, "Talking about those who keep faith."
Besides going through Virgil and Cicero's Orations that year, and frequent composition and declamation, we were prepared, at the end of it, for the most thorough and minute examination in grammar, in Blair's Rhetoric, in the two large octavo volumes of Morse's Geography, every fact committed to memory, every name of country, city, mountain, river, every boundary, population, length, breadth, degree of latitude, and we could repeat, word for word, the Constitution of the United States.
He became a member of the Lighthouse Board in 1852 and was the head after 1871. The excellence of marine illuminants and fog signals today is largely due to his efforts. Though he was later drawn into a controversy with Morse over the credit for the invention of the telegraph, he used his influence to procure the renewal of Morse's patent.
In short, it ushered in the Age of Electricity. Least of all, perhaps, did that Dr. Jackson, who afterwards claimed to have given Morse all his ideas, apprehend the tremendous importance of that chance remark. The fixed idea had, however, taken root in Morse's brain and obsessed him.
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