History of the B & O Telegraph company

A B. & O. Reminiscence.

Coeval with the birth of the telegraph in America, was that of the Baltimore & Ohio Telegraph company, whose recent absorption by its great competitor, the Western Union Telegraph company, is still fresh in mind. In connection with the portrait of Robert W. Garrett, the last president of the B. & O., a reminiscence is in order.

Professor Morse's efforts to secure an appropriation from congress to test the utility of the telegraph, are matters of well-known history. By a scant majority of eight, that body voted an appropriation of $30,000. But after the appropriation was made Professor Morse found little encouragement. Timidity and incredulity met him at every step. At last he appealed to Louis McLane, then at the head of the management of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, which, in 1843, was the only railroad entering Washington, and the only direct route between Baltimore and the capital. The matter was carefully discussed and well weighed. April 5th, 1843, Professor Morse made a formal application to the company for the privilege of laying wires; conservative directors were unbelievers in the utility of the scheme, but finally they were induced to pass this motion, which, it will be noted, most carefully protected the company: "Resolved, That the president be authorized to afford to Mr. Morse such facilities as may be requisite to give his invention a proper trial upon the Washington road; provided, in his opinion, and in that of the engineer, it can be done without injury to the road and without embarrassment to the operations of the company, and provided Mr. Morse will concede to the company the use of the telegraph upon the road without expense, and reserving the right of discontinuing the use of it, if upon experiment, it should prove in any manner injurious." The latter clause will provoke a smile on the part of those who thoughtlessly peruse it, but, upon reflection, there will be the conviction that, instead of irony at such short-sightedness, there should be praise at the nerve displayed. Electricity forty years ago was not so readily trained as now, and the majority of persons would no more get in its immediate vicinity than to-day would they court close association with dynamite. Many a luckless experimenter had suffered from ignorance of results from certain combinations, and it is hazarding little, if anything, to state thousands believed it a satanic agency. The fact was, precious few knew anything whatever about it, and there is not, even at this enlightened stage of progress, half as many persons wholly incredulous as to the ultimate success of air ships as there were people not many years ago who believed telegraphy a non-sensical proposition. Mr. McLane himself indicated a not over sanguine conviction of the outcome when he said, in advocacy of favorable action, "'Whatever may be our individual opinion as to the feasibility of Mr. Morse's invention, it seems to me that it is our duty to concede to him the privilege he asks, and to lend him all the aid in our power, especially as the resolution carefully protects the company against all present or future injury to its works, and secures us the right of requiring its removal at any time."

That Morse originally contemplated stretching the wires in the air is to be doubted, although some authorities claim this was his initial idea, and the underground plan a second thought. There are still living quite a number of railroad employes who remember the preliminary proceedings, and who were frequently in consultation with Morse himself, as well as those engaged with him in the work. They all agree the matter of poles was not mentioned at first, and the discussion confined to the underground plan. Mr. Latrobe says the line was to have been laid in a trench dug in the road-bed, and in none of the reports where mention is made is the question of poles referred to. The probabilities are the stretching of wires above ground was not considered, until the plow with which the trench was made, not upon the road-bed but on the company's right of way, reached Relay and the viaduct at that point. Here it was impossible to continue, as the viaduct was of stone, and, as a matter of course, not to be ploughed. The carrying of the line so as to be out of the reach of the curious and the mischievous, necessitated its being run over the viaduct on raised rods or poles. However, before this emergency arose, the buried section became practically useless, as the current could not be maintained, and all

Robert Garrett.

the money spent — some $12,066 of the $36,000 appropriated — as good as thrown away. The plow, by which the line was laid from Baltimore to Relay, was a ponderous implement showing no ordinary ingenuity in its construction. It made a furrow two inches wide and twenty inches deep, feeding the leaden pipes, in which the wires were encased, from the bottom. On top of the beam of the plow was a cylinder, holding some sixty feet of the pipe, which uncoiled and passed down over little pulleys in the rear edge of the blade of the plow to the earth cutting line, as heretofore stated. A plumber with his fire-pot and soldering irons followed immediately in the rear, and as the supply on the cylinder ran short, would step up, wind on a new section "wipe," or join the ends, and thus keep up the operation of laying the line. The propelling power was in sixteen immense oxen, and the "Whoa, there," "Gee you," and like commands not unmixed with imprecations, together with the novelty of the whole affair, created no no end of excitement for the denizens of the country traversed.

The complete model of the Morse plow was on exhibition in the Baltimore & Ohio display at the New Orleans Exposition, and it attracted no ordinary attention. There was also in the exhibit in the Crescent City a model, showing the construction of the original Morse line after the trench plan had been abandoned. To establish the electric current, a wire connecting with the pole of the battery was soldered, in Baltimore, to a sheet of copper five feet long, two and a half feet wide, and thrown into the harbor. A like copper plate was buried under the pavement in the dry dust of the cellar of the capitol at Washington. To-day the wire is grounded anywhere without ceremony. Despite the faulty construction of the line, and its attendant mechanism, it worked, and thus settled, forever, the question as to Morse's theories being based upon the solid foundation of true genius, and not, as so many wise ones had so persistently insisted, the illusions of a weakened brain.

On the 24th of May, 1844, the line between Baltimore and Washington was completed, and, with the recording instruments in the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad depot in the one city, and in the supreme court chamber in the other, the first formal dispatch ever forwarded by telegraph was sent over the line. "What hath God wrought " were the four memorable words.

In 1858, John W. Garrett was elected to the presidency of the B. & O. company, and was succeeded by his son, Robert Garrett, in 1884. The son was born in Baltimore, April 9, 1847. When only 24 years of age, Robert Garrett was made president of the Valley Railroad company, owned by the Baltimore & Ohio, holding that position until 1875. In 1879 he was elected third vice-president of the Baltimore & Ohio company, and two years later first vice-president, succeeding to the presidency on the death of his father in October, 1884, as stated above. Directly after retiring from the presidency a few weeks ago, Mr. Garrett started with a few intimate friends and his physicians for an extended tour to the Northern Pacific coast and thence to California and Mexico.