Reminiscences of an old-time telegrapher

Reminiscences of an Old-Time Telegrapher.

By Henry A. Reed.

ON this, your twentieth birthday, you can boast of having witnessed and recorded for a score of years the wonderful development and achievements of the science for which you were named. Your memory goes back to the time when the streets of our cities were fairly littered with poles and wires for both telephonic and telegraphic purposes, and also with those for the more dangerous currents: for electric light and power.

Now as you ride through Manhattan or other of our principal cities in elegant cars, heated, lighted and propelled by electricity, which is conducted and applied by invisible agents, and consider that all the energy necessary for these various functions and also much of that used for lighting the streets and great buildings is being extracted from coal which is burned miles away, you and most thinking people say, not as did the first public telegraph message, “What hath God wrought?” but what hath the inspiration of God enabled man to accomplish?

If some “old-timer” should repeat the familiar saying, “This is not so wonderful as what they did when I was a boy,” you would think him an old fossil. Yet he might be more than half right. You were born in an electric age, after telegraphic lines and cables compassed the earth and people had become quite familiar with the telephone another thing had taken place of equal importance. The commercial world had gone wild with the idea that there was money in anything which was electrical.

How different two score years earlier. Then, as now, New York was the first city of the land, but its streets were lighted by whale oil lamps. Its water was obtained from cisterns which were supplied from dirty roofs and street pumps, which were in dangerous proximity to various sources of contagion, and there were no sewers.

The trucking was done by single drays without springs, and the only public conveyances for the people were three or four lines of omnibusses, all of which started at South Ferry and each ran about three miles to various points on the northern limits of the city. The fare was one York shilling.

Faraday and Morse were both born in the year in which Washington was first inaugurated president of the United States. Daniell was then about one year old. Henry was born six years later.

The first recording telegraph, which was the result of the combined labors of these four great men, although for more than half the number of years that measure your life it was enduring its birth throes, did not become a publicly acknowledged child of science until 1843.

In that year, with difficulty, an appropriation of $30,000 for building an experimental line was obtained from Congress, it being then impossible to engage private capital.

Colonel Tom Benton, as he voted aye, said: “Give the crank the money to get rid of him.” Hon. Cave Johnson, who two years later became Postmaster-General, suggested that part of the appropriation should be used for experiments in mesmerism, and the Hon. Sam Houston thought Millerism should be assisted with it.

The acquaintance of the common people at that time with electricity was well illustrated (if you will pardon a personal allusion) by a neighbor of my mother’s who enquired of her what Henry was doing. Being sure that the enquirer had never heard of electricity, she replied, “He is sending messages by lightning,” to which the reply was, “Ah! that must be a mistake, for nobody but God Almighty can control that.”

Such was the field in which the first telegraph was being established in 1844. Its first public exhibition in New York was in the winter of 1844-45 when Ezra Cornell (the founder of Cornell University) and Mr. O. 8S. Wood (who is still living), having paid Professor Stillman $50 for an opinion that the amount of electricity for their experiments would not endanger the buildings, were allowed to run a wire over housetops from the corner of Chambers street and Broadway several blocks northward and to amuse the people for the purpose of getting subscriptions to a stock of $15,000 to build a line from Fort Lee to Philadelphia.

Even at that date they watered the stock and gave $200 scrip for $100 cash. By this inducement they got from New York- ers about half the subscription and the owners of the patents made up the balance.

The first record I find of electricity earning money was on April 1, 1844. The only line then existing was the government line from Baltimore to Washington. As the government had no use for it, consent was obtained to charge for private messages, the Postmaster-General fixing the tariff at one cent for four characters.

A certain politician was willing to take the risk of being the first fool, but claimed to have only one cent in change. The Washington orator said to Baltimore for him, “4,” which was an agreed signal for “what time is it.” The reply came back, “one o’clock.” This customer seems to have paid the first cent ever earned by this great industry. This was the only revenue for four days. On the fifth day twelve cents were earned.

Soon after, however, people began to smell money in it, and in 1845 lines were built from Philadelphia to New York, to Harrisburg, to Baltimore and Washington.

In 1846 the woods were full of people hunting poles and a surprisingly large mileage of lines was built.

Starting from Utica lines were built each way, and New York and Buffalo were connected in the fall of 1848. This was the first line working from New York, although messages had been previously sent from Fort Lee, South, the messages having been taken across the river in boats.

When Professor Morse first announced that he had invented a recording telegraph people thought him a crank, if not a lunatic. When he first demonstrated the truth of his claim beyond a possible doubt most people looked upon it as an inspiration, as though it had been handed down to him as were the tables of the law unto Moses.

Later, and still, men wonder that this great invention should have been perfected by an artist instead of by such scientists as Faraday and Henry, or others whose work was largely along the lines leading up to it.

May this not be explained by the fact that the scientist is engaged in developing, or rather discovering, and explaining certain principles, whereas the great artist must be trained in the science of combination? He studies to combine his colors and thoughts for certain effects.

The portrait must not only be true in outline, but must show character, the portraiture of which requires that a large amount of brains be mixed with the colors. As Morse had to paint a landscape by combining the strength of the mountain crag with the beauty of the shaded brook and the sentiment of the lover’s bower, so he was able as an inventor to make his alphabet from ideas suggested by semaphoric signals, to use the dynamic force of electricity which had recently been dis- covered by Faraday and developed by Henry, and the constant-current battery of Daniell, as well as the mechanical genius of Vail. By the combination of these he succeeded in perfecting the Morse telegraph, practically as it is now used for ordinary commercial purposes on nearly every land line in the world.

Henry A. Reed.

New York, February 8.