Heroes of the Telegraph

SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

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Following early education at Phillips Academy, Andover, at the age of 14 years Morse went to Yale College, where he developed interests in painting and electricity. Upon graduating in 1810 he became a clerk to a Washington publisher and a pupil of Washington Allston, a well-known American painter. The following year he travelled to Europe and entered the London studio of another American artist, Benjamin West, successfully exhibiting at the Royal Academy as well as winning a prize and medal for his sculpture. Returning to Boston and finding little success as a "historical-style" painter, he built up a thriving portrait business, moving in 1818 to Charleston, South Carolina, where three years later he established the (now defunct) South Carolina Academy of Fine Arts. In 1825 he was back in New York, but following the death of his wife and both of his parents that year, he embarked on an extended tour of European art galleries. In 1832, on the boat back to America, he met Charles T.Jackson, who told him of the discovery of the electromagnet and fired his interest in telegraphy to the extent that Morse immediately began to make suggestions for electrical communications and, apparently, devised a form of printing telegraph. Although he returned to his painting and in 1835 was appointed the first Professor of the Literature of Art and Design at the University of New York City, he began to spend more and more time experimenting in telegraphy. In 1836 he invented a relay as a means of extending the cable distance over which telegraph signals could be sent. At this time he became acquainted with Alfred Vail, and the following year, when the US government published the requirements for a national telegraph service, they set out to produce a workable system, with finance provided by Vail's father (who, usefully, owned an ironworks). A patent was filed on 6 October 1837 and a successful demonstration using the so-called Morse code was given on 6 January 1838; the work was, in fact, almost certainly largely that of Vail. As a result of the demonstration a Bill was put forward to Congress for $30,000 for an experimental line between Washington and Baltimore. This was eventually passed and the line was completed, and on 24 May 1844 the first message, "What hath God wrought", was sent between the two cities. In the meantime Morse also worked on the insulation of submarine cables by means of pitch tar and indiarubber.

With success achieved, Morse offered his invention to the Government for $100,000, but this was declined, so the invention remained in private hands. To exploit it, Morse founded the Magnetic Telephone Company in 1845, amalgamating the following year with the telegraph company of a Henry O'Reilly to form Western Union. Having failed to obtain patents in Europe, he now found himself in litigation with others in the USA, but eventually, in 1854, the US Supreme Court decided in his favour and he soon became very wealthy. In 1857 a proposal was made for a telegraph service across the whole of the USA; this was completed in just over four months in 1861. Four years later work began on a link to Europe via Canada, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and Russia, but it was abandoned with the completion of the transatlantic cable, a venture in which he also had some involvement. Showered with honours, Morse became a generous philanthropist in his later years. By 1883 the company he had created was worth $80 million and had a virtual monopoly in the USA.

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SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

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Initially apprenticed to a carpenter, Gray soon showed an interest in chemistry, but he eventually studied electrical engineering at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, in the late 1850s. In 1869 he founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company, where he devised an electric-needle annunciator for use in hotels and lifts and carried out experimental work aimed at the development of a means of distant-speech communication. After successful realization of a liquid-based microphone and public demonstrations of a receiver using a metal diaphragm, on 14 February 1876 he deposited a caveat of intention to file a patent claim within three months for the invention of the telephone, only to learn that Alexander Graham Bell had filed a full patent claim only three hours earlier on the same day. Following litigation, the patent was eventually awarded to Bell. In 1880 Gray was appointed Professor of Dynamic Electricity at Oberlin College, but he appears to have retained his business interests since in 1891 he was both a member of the firm of Gray and Barton and electrician to his old firm, Western Electric. Subsequently, in 1895, he invented the TelAutograph, a form of remote-writing telegraph, or facsimile, capable of operating over short distances. The system used a transmitter in which the x and y movements of a writing stylus were coupled to a pair of variable resistors. In turn, these were connected by two telegraph wires to a pair of receiving coils, which were used to control the position of a pen on a sheet of paper, thus replicating the movement of the original stylus.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology, Telecommunications

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Alexander Bain was born into a crofting family in a remote part of Scotland. He was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Wick and during that time he was strongly influenced by a lecture on "Heat, sound and electricity" that he heard in nearby Thurso. This lecture induced him to take up a position in Clerkenwell in London, working as a journeyman clockmaker, where he was able to further his knowledge of electricity by attending lectures at the Adelaide Gallery and the Polytechnic Institution. His thoughts naturally turned to the application of electricity to clockmaking, and despite a bitter dispute with Charles Wheatstone over priority he was granted the first British patent for an electric clock. This patent, taken out on 11 January 1841, described a mechanism for an electric clock, in which an oscillating component of the clock operated a mechanical switch that initiated an electromagnetic pulse to maintain the regular, periodic motion. This principle was used in his master clock, produced in 1845. On 12 December of the same year, he patented a means of using electricity to control the operation of steam railway engines via a steam-valve. His earliest patent was particularly far-sighted and anticipated most of the developments in electrical horology that occurred during the nineteenth century. He proposed the use of electricity not only to drive clocks but also to distribute time over a distance by correcting the hands of mechanical clocks, synchronizing pendulums and using slave dials (here he was anticipated by Steinheil). However, he was less successful in putting these ideas into practice, and his electric clocks proved to be unreliable. Early electric clocks had two weaknesses: the battery; and the switching mechanism that fed the current to the electromagnets. Bain's earth battery, patented in 1843, overcame the first defect by providing a reasonably constant current to drive his clocks, but unlike Hipp he failed to produce a reliable switch.

The application of Bain's numerous patents for electric telegraphy was more successful, and he derived most of his income from these. They included a patent of 12 December 1843 for a form of fax machine, a chemical telegraph that could be used for the transmission of text and of images (facsimile). At the receiver, signals were passed through a moving band of paper impregnated with a solution of ammonium nitrate and potassium ferrocyanide. For text, Morse code signals were used, and because the system could respond to signals faster than those generated by hand, perforated paper tape was used to transmit the messages; in a trial between Paris and Lille, 282 words were transmitted in less than one minute. In 1865 the Abbé Caselli, a French engineer, introduced a commercial fax service between Paris and Lyons, based on Bain's device. Bain also used the idea of perforated tape to operate musical wind instruments automatically. Bain squandered a great deal of money on litigation, initially with Wheatstone and then with Morse in the USA. Although his inventions were acknowledged, Bain appears to have received no honours, but when towards the end of his life he fell upon hard times, influential persons in 1873 secured for him a Civil List Pension of £80 per annum and the Royal Society gave him £150.

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See also: Bakewell, Frederick C.

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SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

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Reis entered the Garniers Institute in Friedrichsdorf in 1844 and then the Hassels Institute in Frankfurt. There he developed an interest in science, but on leaving school in 1850 he was apprenticed to the colour trade by his uncle. This involved study at the trade school and Dr Poppe's Institute in Frankfurt; while there he joined the Frankfurt Physical Society. Following military service in 1855 he studied to be a teacher. After his graduation he obtained a post at Garniers, where he began to pursue experiments with electricity and the development of hearing aids. In 1859 he sent a paper on the radiation of electricity to the editor of Annalen der Physik, but this was rejected, as was a later submission. Undeterred, he continued his experiments and by 1861 he had designed several instruments for the transmission of sound. The transmitter consisted of a membrane on which rested a metal strip that made contact with a metal point and completed an electrical circuit under the action of sound. The receiver consisted of an iron needle surrounded by a coil and resting on a sounding box, the operation probably being achieved by magnetostriction. The invention, which he described in a lecture to the Frankfurt Physical Society on 26 October 1861 and in a published paper, could produce tones and probably also speech, but was largely rejected by the scientific fraternity. The claim to produce speech was discounted in subsequent court cases that upheld the patents of Alexander Bell.

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