A hundred years ago practically nothing was known of electricity.

Persons now living were born into a world that had never seen an electric telegraph, a telephone, an electric car, or an electric light. We are living in the morning of electrical knowledge, and what the day may bring no one can imagine. Americans have given the world many of the greatest inventions, and in the field of electricity they have given it nearly everything of value. It is to American ingenuity that civilization is indebted for the electrical telegraph, the sub-marine cable, the telephone, the electric light, and the electric car. The names of Morse, Vail, Field, Bell, Brush, Gray, Edison, and Sprague--all American electrical inventors--will always be prominent in the list of the world's great benefactors.

If you will rub a stick of sealing wax briskly with a woolen cloth, you will find that the stick of wax will attract to itself bits of bran, small shreds of paper, and the like. This is the simplest experiment in electricity. In the same way, by rubbing amber with silk, Thales, a Greek philosopher who lived in the sixth century before Christ, is thought to have discovered electricity. The Greek word for _amber_ is _elektron_. Because of the supposed discovery of electricity in amber by Thales, the English word _electricity_ was "coined" and used for the first time by William Gilbert, a British physician and scientist, who lived during the reigns of Elizabeth and James.

For nearly twenty-five centuries, reaching from the time of Thales to the opening of the nineteenth century, the world learned practically nothing about electricity. The start in modern electrical knowledge was made by Galvani, an Italian scientist, born in 1737, who just before the last century dawned showed that electricity can be produced by the contact of metals with fluids. The term _galvanic_, used in connection with electricity, comes from the name of this investigator.

Galvani's experiments suggested the electric battery to Volta, another Italian scientist who was born in 1745. The electrical word _voltaic_ is in honor of Volta. In 1752 Benjamin Franklin flew his kite into the thunderstorm and proved that lightning is electricity. A little later Hans Christian Oersted, a Danish investigator, pointed out the relation between electricity and magnetism. In the early part of the nineteenth century, Michael Faraday, an eminent English physicist, discovered the possibility of producing electric currents through the motion of a magnet. Faraday's discovery led to the electric dynamo machine, the source of modern power over electricity.

The oldest and greatest of electrical inventions is the telegraph.

_Tele_ is a Greek adverb meaning "afar." _Graph_ comes from the Greek verb "to write." _Telegraph_ therefore means "to write afar."

The idea of telegraphic communication is more than two and a half centuries old. In 1632 Galileo referred to a secret art of communicating at great distances by means of magnetic needles. In 1753 there appeared in the _Scots Magazine_ an article signed "C. M."

(since ascertained to have been Charles Morrison, of Greenock in Scotland) setting forth a fairly clear idea of the electric telegraph.

Joseph Henry, of Washington, D.C., in 1831 signaled through an electrical circuit a mile in length. The first commercially successful telegraph was devised in 1837 by Samuel F. B. Morse, an American.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Charlestown, Ma.s.sachusetts, April 27, 1791. He was educated in the common schools of his native town and in Yale University, where he was graduated in 1810. After graduation, like Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, he went to Europe to study art, and became successful as an artist. On his return to America in 1832, one of his fellow pa.s.sengers on the ship was Charles T. Jackson, who had been studying electricity in Paris. Jackson told Morse of some experiments in electricity which the French had been making, and remarked that it would be a good thing if news could be transmitted through long distances by electricity. Morse replied, "Why can't it be done?" From that hour he gave his time and energy to the invention of the electric telegraph. During the remainder of the voyage he drew plans for apparatus and tried to devise an electric alphabet.

In 1837 he put two instruments at the ends of a short line through which he sent and received messages. About this time he met a man who was destined to be of great service to him in promoting his invention, and one who deserves almost as much credit for it as Morse himself.

This was Alfred Vail.

Vail was born at Morristown, New Jersey, September 25, 1807. He was a son of Stephen Vail, the wealthy owner of the Speedwell iron works.

One day in September, 1837, after Morse had completed his apparatus, he was invited to exhibit it at the University of the City of New York.

Alfred Vail was a student in the university at the time and was one of the spectators to whom the apparatus was exhibited. He was much impressed with it. Morse needed money, and Alfred Vail's father had it.

Morse was invited to the home of the Vails in Speedwell, where the matter of the invention was talked over. The sum of two thousand dollars was necessary to get the invention started. Stephen Vail agreed to furnish the money. Alfred Vail was to construct apparatus and exhibit it to Congress. For this he was to have one-fourth of the proceeds arising from the patent.

Alfred Vail set to work to construct the apparatus. A room in his father's factory was set apart for this purpose. William Baxter, a bright mechanic employed in the iron shops, was chosen to a.s.sist him.

As secrecy was required for the work, the room was kept locked. For several months Vail and Baxter occupied together the locked room, sharing each other's confidence and each other's elation or disappointment as the work went well or ill. On January 6, 1838, Baxter, without hat or coat, rushed to the elder Vail's residence to announce that the apparatus was completed.

Mr. Vail had become discouraged. However, he went to see the trial of the apparatus. He found his son at one end of the three miles of wire that was stretched around the room, and Morse at the other. After a short explanation had been made to him, he wrote on a piece of paper, "A patient waiter is no loser." He then said to his son, "If you can send this, and Mr. Morse can read it at the other end, I shall be convinced." The message was sent and read at the other end of the wire.

The apparatus was taken to Washington, where it created not only wonder but excitement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL F. B. MORSE]

In September, 1837, Morse filed an application for a patent on his invention. In December of the same year he failed in his effort to secure from Congress an appropriation for an experimental line which he proposed to build between Washington and Baltimore. In May, 1838, he went to Europe seeking aid. The governments there refused him funds or patents. In May, 1839, he returned to the United States and began an heroic struggle for recognition. During this period he often suffered for the barest necessities of life. Sometimes he could afford but a single meal in twenty-four hours.

Finally, after repeated disappointments, when Morse himself had almost given up hope, the House of Representatives of the Twenty-seventh Congress, on the last night of its session, March 3, 1843, by a vote of ninety to eighty-two, appropriated thirty thousand dollars for building a trial line between Washington and Baltimore. After the bill had pa.s.sed the House, the outlook for its pa.s.sage in the Senate was not bright. One Senator who was favorable to the bill advised Morse to "give it up, return home, and think no more of it." The bill had been made the object of opposition and ridicule; one prominent official, to show his contempt for the project, proposed that half the amount asked for should be used in mesmeric experiments. Morse, believing that the Senate would defeat the appropriation, went to his lodging place to retire for the night. He found that after paying the amount he owed at the hotel, he would have less than forty cents left. Early the next morning information reached him that a little before midnight the Senate had pa.s.sed the bill. Apparent failure had turned into victory; the fight was won.

"Work was begun at once.[1] On April 30 the line reached Annapolis Junction, twenty-two miles from Washington, and was operated with satisfactory results.

[1] From an account by Stephen Vail used in _Graded Literature Readers_, by permission of _Truth_.

"May 1, 1844, was the date upon which the Whig convention was to a.s.semble in Baltimore, to nominate the candidates of that party for President and Vice-President. It was arranged between Morse and Vail that the latter should obtain from the pa.s.sengers upon the afternoon train from Baltimore to Washington, when it stopped at Annapolis Junction, information of the proceedings of the convention and transmit it at once to Morse at the Capitol in Washington.

"The train arrived at half-past three o'clock, and from the pa.s.sengers, among whom were many of the delegates to the convention, Mr. Vail ascertained that the convention had a.s.sembled, nominated the candidates, and adjourned. This information he at once dispatched to Morse, with whom was gathered a number of prominent men who had been invited to be present. Morse sat awaiting the prearranged signal from Vail, when suddenly there came from the instrument the understood clicking, and as the mechanism started, unwinding the ribbon of paper upon which came the embossed dots and dashes, the complete success of the telegraph over twenty-two miles of wire was established.

"Slowly came the message. When it had ended, Morse rose and said: 'Gentlemen, the convention has adjourned. The train bearing that information has just left Annapolis Junction for Washington, and Mr.

Vail has telegraphed me the ticket nominated, and it is--' he hesitated, holding in his hand the final proof of victory over s.p.a.ce, 'it is--it is Clay and Frelinghuysen.'

"'You are quizzing us,' was the quiet remark. 'It's easy enough for you to guess that Clay is at the head of the ticket, but Frelinghuysen--who is Frelinghuysen?'

"'I only know,' was the dignified answer, 'that it is the name Mr. Vail has sent to me from Annapolis Junction, where he had the news five minutes ago from the train bound this way bearing the delegates.'

"At that time the twenty-two miles from the Junction to Washington required an hour and a quarter for the fastest trains, and long before the train reached Washington the newsboys--enterprising even in those days--had their 'extras' upon the streets, their headings 'By Telegraph' telling the story, and being the first time that such a legend had ever appeared upon a printed sheet.

"A great and enthusiastic crowd greeted the delegates as they alighted from the train at the station. They were struck dumb with astonishment when they heard the people hurrahing for 'Clay and Frelinghuysen,' and saw in cold type before their very eyes the information which they supposed was exclusively their own, but which had preceded them 'by telegraph.' They had asked Mr. Vail at the Junction what he was doing when they saw him working the telegraph key, and when he told them, they joked about it most glibly, for no one had any belief in the success of the telegraph."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIRST MESSAGE BY TELEGRAPH]

By May 23 the entire line was completed from Washington to Baltimore.

On the next day, May 24, 1844, Morse from Washington sent to Vail at Baltimore the first message ever sent over the completed wire, "What hath G.o.d wrought?"

This famous message was dictated by Miss Ellsworth, daughter of the commissioner of patents at that time. She had taken a keen interest in the success of the bill appropriating the thirty thousand dollars for the experiment, and was the first to convey to Morse the news that the bill had pa.s.sed. Morse thereupon gave Miss Ellsworth his promise that the first message to pa.s.s over the line should be dictated by her. A bit of the original wire and the receiver that Vail used at Baltimore are now preserved in the National Museum in Washington. The transmitter used by Morse at the Washington end of the line has been lost.

Morse lived to see his system of telegraphy adopted by the United States, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Australia.

Ninety-five per cent of all telegraphy is by his system. He finally received a large fortune from his invention. Unlike Columbus, Morse was honored in his lifetime for his achievement. Foreign nations bestowed upon him honors and medals, and in August, 1858, a convention of European powers called by Napoleon III at Paris gave Morse four hundred thousand francs (about $80,000) as a testimonial of his services to civilization. In October, 1842, he laid the first sub-marine telegraph line. It was across the harbor of New York. Later he a.s.sisted Peter Cooper and Cyrus W. Field in their efforts to lay the first Atlantic cable. Honored by all the civilized world, he died in New York City April 2, 1872. Thirteen years earlier Vail had died at his home in Morristown, New Jersey.

In the Morse system the alphabet is represented by combinations of dots and dashes. The dots denote short currents of electricity flowing through the wire; the dashes, longer ones. Credit for the alphabet really belongs to Vail; Morse had devised a somewhat complicated system, but Vail invented the dots and dashes. He discovered that _e_ and _t_ are the most frequently used letters. He denoted _e_ by one dot, or one short current; _t_ he indicated by one dash, or one long current. The other letters are denoted by dots and dashes, as _a_, one dot and one dash; _b_, one dash and three dots, etc.

In 1838 Steinheil, a German investigator, contributed an important element to the practical operation of the electric telegraph by discovering that the earth could take the place of the return wire, which up to that time had been deemed necessary to complete the circuit.

At first only one message could be sent over a wire at a time. Now several messages may be transmitted in opposite directions over the same wire at the same time.

Wireless telegraphy is based on the principle discovered and announced by the English scientist Michael Faraday, that heat, light, and electricity are transmitted by ether waves, and that these ether waves permeate all s.p.a.ce. The first to demonstrate the practical operation of wireless telegraphy was Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian. In 1890 he undertook experiments to prove his theory that the electric current readily pa.s.ses through any substance, and when once started in a given direction follows a direct course without the aid of a conductor.

Marconi made the first practical demonstration of wireless telegraphy in 1896. In March, 1899, he sent a wireless message across the English channel from France to England. In December, 1901, be began his first experiments in wireless telegraphy across the Atlantic. In December of the following year the first official trans-Atlantic wireless message was sent. Now wireless telegraphic messages are sent regularly to and from moving ships in mid-ocean, and across the three thousand miles of the Atlantic between Europe and America.

One of the most striking ill.u.s.trations of the power of perseverance is the successful struggle of Cyrus West Field in laying the Atlantic cable. Mr. Field was born in Stockbridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, November 30, 1819. His schooling, which was slight, was secured in his native town.

When he was fifteen years old, he secured a position in a business house in New York City at a salary of fifty dollars a year. He subsequently founded a prosperous business in the manufacture and sale of paper. In 1854 Mr. Field's attention was directed to an attempt to lay an electric cable at Newfoundland, which had failed for want of funds. The idea of laying a cable across the Atlantic occurred to him.

He laid his plans before a number of prominent citizens of New York. On four successive evenings they met at his home to study the project, and they finally decided to undertake it. On May 6, 1854, a company was organized to lay the cable, with Peter Cooper as president.

The next twelve years Field devoted exclusively to the cable. He went to England thirty times. The first cable was brought from England and was to be laid across the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Forty miles had been successfully laid, when a storm arose and the cable was cut in order to save the ship. Then came a year's delay. Meantime the bottom of the sea was being explored and a vast tableland was discovered stretching from Newfoundland to Ireland. Field went to England, where he had little difficulty in organizing a company, and work was then begun on the construction of a new cable. Next he laid his enterprise before Congress, and asked for money. An appropriation bill was finally pa.s.sed in the Senate by a majority of one, and was signed by President Pierce on March 3, 1857, the day before he retired from office. Field returned to England to superintend the construction of the cable and to make preparations for laying it. At last it was ready, tested, and coiled on the ship. On August 11, 1857, the sixth day out, after three hundred and thirty-five miles had been laid, the cable parted.

Lord Clarendon, in an interview with Field, had remarked: "But, suppose you don't succeed? Suppose you make the attempt and fail--your cable is lost in the sea--then what will you do?" The reply came promptly, "Charge it to profit and loss, and go to work to lay another." Lord Clarendon was so well pleased with the reply that he pledged his aid. The loss of three hundred and thirty-five miles of cable was the loss of half a million dollars. Field came back to America and secured from the Secretary of the Navy the vessels needed for another trial. On June 10, 1858, the United States steam frigate _Niagara_, then the largest in the world, and the British ship _Agamemnon_ set out from opposite sh.o.r.es, bound for mid-ocean. The vessels met, and the two sections of the cable were spliced; then they began laying it toward both sh.o.r.es at the same time. After a little more than a hundred miles had been laid, this cable parted in mid-ocean, and Field hurried to London to meet the discouraged directors.

On July 17, the ships set sail again for mid-ocean. The cable was spliced in fifteen hundred fathoms of water and again the ships started for opposite sh.o.r.es. Field was on the _Niagara_ headed toward Newfoundland. Scarcely any one looked for success. Field was the only man who kept up courage through this trying period. On August 5, 1858, he telegraphed the safe arrival of the ship at Newfoundland. The sh.o.r.e ends of the cable were laid and on August 16 a message from Queen Victoria of England to President Buchanan flashed under the sea. There was great excitement everywhere. The two worlds had been tied together with a strange electric nerve.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CYRUS W. FIELD]

On the evening of the first of September a great ovation was tendered Field in New York. National salutes were fired; processions were formed; there was an address by the mayor, and late at night a great banquet. While the banquet was in progress, the cable parted.

Everyone except Field was disheartened. He went to work again, and during the next five years, the long years of the Civil War, he labored unceasingly. A larger cable with a greater resisting force was made. On the twenty-third of July, 1865, the steamship _Great Eastern_ began another attempt to lay the cable. When it was within six hundred miles of Newfoundland, the cable parted again. For nine days attempts were made, in two and a half miles of water, to grapple the cable, splice it, and continue the work of laying it. Three times the cable was grappled, but the apparatus on the ship was not strong enough to hoist it aboard. Still Field never faltered. Another British company was formed and another cable was constructed. The _Great Eastern_ was again loaded and on July 13, a Friday, set sail westward laying the cable. After an uncertain voyage of two weeks the _Great Eastern_ arrived at Newfoundland, and the undertaking had again been successfully accomplished. Field telegraphed his arrival as follows: "_Hearts Content, July 27, 1866_. We arrived here at nine o'clock this morning. All well. Thank G.o.d, the cable is laid, and is in perfect working order. CYRUS W. FIELD."

Twelve years of unfaltering perseverance had won. Honors were heaped upon Field. Congress voted him a gold medal and the thanks of the nation. The prime minister of Great Britain declared that only the fact of his being the citizen of another nation prevented his receiving the highest honors in the power of the British government to bestow. The Paris "Exposition Universelle" of 1867 honored him with the Grand Medal, the highest prize it had to give.

Mr. Field was afterward interested in the laying of cables connecting Europe, India, China, Australia, the West Indies, and South America. In 1880-81 he made a trip around the world, full of satisfaction in his own part in making a new era of the world's civilization. He died at his home in New York on July 11, 1892.

The effect of the electric telegraph on government, intelligence, and civilization in general can scarcely be overstated. Sydney Smith, writing to Earl Grey after the admission of California into the United States, said that this marked an end to the great American republic; for how could people with such diversified interests, with such natural barriers, hold together? He did not foresee how strongly a fine copper wire could bind together the two seaboards and the great plains of the interior. Without the electric telegraph, neither the great daily newspaper nor the modern operation of railroads would be possible. It wipes away the natural boundaries of nations and makes neighbors of all men.

In 1819 Sir Charles Wheatsone, an English physicist, invented an instrument popularly known as the "magic lyre," but which he called the telephone. The first part of this word is the same Greek adverb _tele_ that is found in _telegraph_. The _phone_ is from another Greek word meaning "to sound." To _telephone_, therefore, means "to sound afar." The use of the English word _telephone_ by Wheatsone is historically the first appearance of the word in our language. His device did nothing but reproduce music by means of sounding boards.

The inventor of the modern telephone is Alexander Graham Bell.