Part 11

It is curious to note the many kinds of opposition these first railways encountered. Said Mr. Berkeley, a member of Parliament for Cheltenham, “Nothing is more distasteful to me than to hear the echo of our hills reverberating with the noise of hissing railroad engines running through the heart of our hunting country, and destroying that noble sport to which I have been accustomed from my childhood.” One Colonel Sibthorpe declared that he “would rather meet a highwayman, or see a burglar on his premises, than an engineer; he should be much more safe, and of the two classes he thought the former more respectable!” Sir Astley Cooper, the eminent surgeon, said to Robert Stephenson, when the latter called to see him about a new road, “Your scheme is preposterous in the extreme. It is of so extravagant a character as to be positively absurd. Then look at the recklessness of your proceedings! You are proposing to cut up our estates in all directions for the purpose of making an unnecessary road. Do you think for one moment of the destruction of property involved in it? Why, gentlemen, if this sort of thing is allowed to go on, you will in a very few years _destroy the noblesse_!” Physicians maintained that travel through tunnels would be most prejudicial to health. Dr. Lardner protested against passengers being compelled to put up with what he called “the destruction of the atmospheric air,” and Sir Anthony Carlisle insisted that “tunnels would expose healthy people to colds, catarrhs, and consumption.” Many critics expected the boilers of the locomotives to explode at any and all times. Others were sure that the railways would throw so many workmen out of employment that revolution must follow, and still others declared that England was being delivered utterly into the power of a small group of manufacturers and mine-owners. But in spite of all this the people took to riding on the railways and England prospered.

The aristocracy held out the longest. Noblemen did not relish the thought of traveling in the same carriages with workmen. The private coach had for long been a badge of station. For a time, therefore, the old families and country gentility sent their servants and their luggage by train, but themselves jogged along the old post-roads in the family chariots. But there were more accidents and more delays in travel by coach than by train, and so, one by one, they pocketed their pride and capitulated. The Duke of Wellington, who had seen the accident to Mr. Huskisson near Liverpool, held out against such travel for a long time. But when Queen Victoria, in 1842, used the railway to go from London to Windsor, the last resistance ended, and the Iron Duke, together with the rest of his order, followed the Queen’s example. Said the famous Dr. Arnold of Rugby, as he watched a train speeding through the country, “I rejoice to see it, and think that feudality is gone forever. It is so great a blessing to think that any one evil is really extinct.”

Stephenson himself was one of the busiest men in the kingdom. He was engineer of half a dozen lines that were building, and he traveled incessantly. Many nights the only sleep he had was while sitting in his chaise riding over country roads. At dawn he would be at work, surveying, planning, directing, until nightfall. In three years he surveyed and directed the construction of the North Midland line, running from Derby to Leeds, the York and North Midland, from Normanton to York, the Manchester and Leeds, the Birmingham and Derby, and the Sheffield and Rotherham. And in addition to this he traveled far and wide to give advice about distant lines, to the south of England, to Scotland, and to the north of Ireland to inspect the proposed Ulster Railway. He took an office in London, in order that he might take part in the railway discussions that were continually coming before Parliament. His knowledge of every detail relating to the subject was enormous. He knew both the engineering and the business sides most intimately. “In fact,” he said to a committee of the House of Commons in 1841, “there is hardly a railway in England that I have not had to do with.” Yet in spite of all this work he found time to look after his coal mines near Chesterfield, to establish lime-works at Ambergate, on the Midland Railway, and to superintend his flourishing locomotive factory at Newcastle.

King Leopold of Belgium invited him to Brussels, and there discussed with him his plans for a railway from Brussels to Ghent. The King made him a Knight of his Order of Leopold, and when the railway was finished George Stephenson was one of the chief guests of honor at the opening. Later he went to France, where he was consulted in regard to the new line that was building between Orleans and Tours. From there he went to Spain to look into the possible construction of a road between Madrid and the Bay of Biscay. He found the government of Spain indifferent to the railway, and there were many doubts as to whether there would be sufficient traffic to pay the cost of construction. His report to the shareholders in this proposed “Royal North of Spain Railway” was therefore unfavorable, and the idea was shortly after abandoned.

Stephenson had moved his home from Alton Grange to Tapton House in 1838. The latter place was a large, comfortable dwelling, beautifully situated among woods about a mile to the northeast of Chesterfield. Here he lived the life of a country gentleman, free to indulge the strong love of nature that had always been one of his leading characteristics. He began to grow fine fruits and vegetables and flowers, and his farm and gardens and hothouses became celebrated all over England. He was continually sought out by inventors and scientific men, who wanted his views on their particular work. He also spent some time at Tapton in devising improvements for the locomotive. One of these was a three-cylinder locomotive, and such an engine was later used successfully on the North Eastern Railway. It was, however, found to be too expensive an engine for general railroad use. He also invented a new self-acting brake. He sent a model of this to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers at Birmingham, of which he was president, together with a report describing it in full. “Any effectual plan,” he wrote, “for increasing the safety of railway traveling is, in my mind, of such vital importance, that I prefer laying my scheme open to the world to taking out a patent for it; and it will be a source of great pleasure to me to know that it has been the means of saving even one human life from destruction, or that it has prevented one serious concussion.”

He also gave great assistance to his son Robert, who was rapidly becoming a railway engineer second only to his father in fame. George Stephenson began the line from Chester to Holyhead, which was completed by Robert. Robert designed the tubular bridge across the Menai Straits on this line, which was considered a most remarkable feat. Permission could not be obtained to interfere with the navigation of the Straits in the slightest degree during the building, and so piers and arches could not be used. It occurred to Robert Stephenson that the train might be run through a hollow iron beam. Two tubes, which were to form the bridge, were made of wrought iron, floated out into the stream, and raised into position. This new and original railway bridge proved a success, and convinced England that Robert had inherited his father’s genius for surmounting what seemed impossible natural difficulties. George Stephenson did not live to see this line completed. He died August 12, 1848.

In many respects Stephenson was like Watt. He came from the working classes, inheriting no special gift for science, and little leisure to follow his own bent. What he learned he got at first hand, in the coal mines and the engine shops. What he accomplished was due largely to indomitable perseverance. Others had built steam-engines that were almost successful as locomotives, but for one reason or another had never pushed their invention to that point where the world could actually use it. When Stephenson had built his locomotive he fought for it, he made men take an interest in it, and the world accept it. He always spoke of his career as a battle. “I have fought,” said he, “for the locomotive single-handed for nearly twenty years, having no engineer to help me until I had reared engineers under my own care.” And again he said, “I put up with every rebuff, _determined_ not to be put down.”

Stephenson did for the locomotive what Watt did for the condensing engine. He took the primitive devices of other men, and by the rare powers of selection, combination, and invention produced a finished product of wonderful power and efficiency. True it is that neither Watt nor Stephenson were the first men to conceive of a steam-engine or a locomotive, nor even the first to build working models, but they were the first to finish what they began, and add the steam-engine and the locomotive to the other servants of men.

Dr. Arnold was doubtless right when he looked upon the railway as presaging the end of the feudal system. Its value is beyond any estimate. It has widened man’s horizon, and given him all the lands instead of only the limits of his homestead.

X

MORSE AND THE TELEGRAPH

1791-1872

On the packet ship _Sully_, sailing from the French port of Havre for New York on October 1, 1832, were Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, who had been attending certain lectures on electricity in Paris, and an American artist named Samuel Finley Breese Morse. Dr. Jackson was intensely interested in electricity, and more especially in some experiments that Faraday had lately been making in regard to it. He had an electromagnet in his trunk, and one day, as a number of the passengers sat at dinner, he began to describe the laws of electro-magnetism as they were then known. He told how the force of a magnet could be tremendously increased by passing an electric current a number of times about a bar of soft iron. One of the diners asked how far electricity could be transmitted and how fast it traveled. Dr. Jackson answered that it seemed to travel instantaneously, none of the experimenters having detected any appreciable difference in time between the completing of the electric circuit and the appearance of the spark at any distance. Morse, who had been interested in the study of electricity at Yale College, said that if the electric current could be made visible in any part of the circuit he saw no reason why messages could not be sent instantaneously by electricity. To send a message would simply require the breaking of the circuit in such different ways as could be made to represent the letters of the alphabet. The conversation went on to other subjects, but the artist kept the conclusion he had just stated in mind. That night he walked the deck discussing the matter with Dr. Jackson, and for the rest of the voyage he was busy jotting down suggestions in his note-book and elaborating a plan for transforming breaks in an electric current into letters.

The facts at his disposal, and his first method of dealing with them, were comparatively simple. The electric current would travel to any distance along a wire. The current being broken, a spark would appear. The spark would stand for one letter. The lack of a spark might stand for another. The length of its absence would indicate another. With these three indications as a starting-point he could build up an alphabet. As there was no limit to the distance that electricity would travel there seemed no reason why these dots and dashes, or sparks and spaces, should not be sent all around the world.

Professor Jeremiah Day had taught Morse at Yale that the electric spark might be made to pierce a band of unrolling paper. Harrison Gray Dyar, of New York, in 1827, had shown that the spark would decompose a chemical solution and so leave a stain as a mark, and it was known that it would excite an electro-magnet, which would move a piece of soft iron, and that if a pencil were attached to this a mark would be made on paper. Therefore Morse knew that if he devised his alphabet he had only to choose the best method of indicating the dots and dashes by the current. The voyage from Havre to New York occupied six weeks, and during the greater part of this time he was busy working out a mechanical sender which would serve to break the electric current by a series of types set on a stick which should travel at an even rate of speed. The teeth of the type would complete the circuit or would break the current as they passed, and so send the letters. At the receiving end of the line the current as it was sent would excite the electro-magnet, which would be attached to a pencil, and so make a mark, and each mark would represent one of the symbols that were to stand for letters. He worked day and night over these first plans, and after a few days showed his notes to Mr. William C. Rives, a passenger, who had been the United States Minister to France. Mr. Rives made various criticisms, and Morse took these up in turn, and after long study overcame each one, so that by the end of the voyage he felt that he had worked out a practical method of making the electric current send and receive messages.

At a later date a contest arose as to the respective claims of Samuel Morse and Dr. Jackson to be considered the inventor of the recording telegraph, and the evidence of their fellow passengers on board the _Sully_ was given in great detail. From all that was then said it would appear that Dr. Jackson knew quite as much, if not more, about the properties of electro-magnetism than Morse did, but that he was of a speculative turn of mind, whereas Morse was practical, and capable of reducing the other’s theories to a working basis. The note-books he submitted, and which were well remembered by many of his fellow voyagers, showed the various combinations of dots, lines, and spaces with which he was constructing an alphabet, and also the crude diagrams of the recording instrument which should mark the dots and lines on a rolling piece of paper. Captain Pell, in command of the _Sully_, testified later, that as the packet came into port Morse said to him, “Well, Captain, should you hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship _Sully_.” The times were ripe for his great invention, and although other men, abler scientists and students, had foreseen the possibilities of such a system, it was Morse who determined to put it into practice.

But Samuel Morse was a painter, and all his career thus far had lain along artistic lines. True, when he was an undergraduate at Yale he had been much interested in Professor Day’s lectures on electricity, and had written long letters home in regard to them. But when he was about to graduate, he wrote to his father, a well-known clergyman of Charlestown, Massachusetts, “I am now released from college, and am attending to painting. As to my choice of a profession, I still think I was made for a painter, and would be obliged to you to make such arrangements with Mr. Allston for my studying with him as you shall think expedient. I should desire to study with him during the winter; and, as he expects to return to England in the spring, I should admire to be able to go with him. But of this we will talk when we meet at home.”

Washington Allston was at that time the leading influence in the primitive art life of the country, and Morse was very fortunate to have won his friendship and interest. Allston took him to England, and there introduced him to Benjamin West, the dean of painters and a man who was always eager to aid young countrymen of his who planned to follow his career. Morse made a careful drawing of the Farnese Hercules and took it to West. The veteran examined it and handed it back, saying, “Now finish it.” Morse worked over it some time longer, and returned it to West. “Very well, indeed, sir,” said West. “Go on and finish it.” “Is it not finished?” asked Morse. “See,” said West, “you have not marked that muscle, nor the articulation of the finger-joints.” Again Morse worked over it, and again returned, only to meet with the same counsel to complete the picture. Then the older man relented. “Well, I have tried you long enough,” said he. “Now, sir, you have learned more by this drawing than you would have accomplished in double the time by a dozen half-finished beginnings. It is not many drawings, but the character of one which makes a thorough draughtsman. Finish one picture, sir, and you are a painter.”

Morse now decided to paint a large picture of “The Dying Hercules” for exhibition at the Royal Academy. In order to be sure of the anatomy he first modeled the figure in clay, and this cast was so well done that, acting on West’s advice, he entered it for a prize in sculpture then offered by the Society of Arts. This entry won, and the young American was presented with the gold medal of the society before a distinguished audience. The picture that he painted from this model was hung at the exhibition of the Royal Academy, and received high praise from the critics, so that Morse felt he had begun his career as artist most auspiciously.

His natural inclination was toward the painting of large canvases dealing with historical and mythical subjects, which were much in fashion at that period, and he now set to work on the subject, “The Judgment of Jupiter in the case of Apollo, Marpessa, and Idas.” This was to be submitted for the prize of fifty guineas and medal offered by the Royal Academy. It seems to have been a fine piece of work, and met with West’s hearty praise, but before it could be submitted the artist was obliged to return home at an urgent summons from his father.

Boston had already heard of Morse’s success in London when he reached home in October, 1815. His “Judgment of Jupiter” was exhibited, and became the talk of the town, but when he opened a studio and began to paint no one offered to buy any of his pictures. He needed money badly, and he saw none coming his way. After a year’s struggle he closed his studio, and traveled through the country sections of New England, looking for work as a portrait painter. This he found, and he wrote to his parents from Concord, New Hampshire, “I have painted five portraits at $15 each, and have two more engaged and many talked of. I think I shall get along well. I believe I could make an independent fortune in a few years if I devoted myself exclusively to portraits, so great is the desire for good portraits in the different country towns.”

In Concord he met Miss Lucretia P. Walker, whom he married a few years later. Meantime he went to visit his uncle in Charleston, South Carolina, and found his portraits so popular that he received one hundred and fifty orders in a few weeks. He was also commissioned to paint a portrait of James Monroe, then President, for the Charleston Common Council, and the picture was considered a striking masterpiece. He soon after married, and settled his household goods in New York, with $3,000 made by his portraits, as his capital.

He knew what he wanted to do, to paint great historical pictures. But the public did not appreciate his efforts in that line. He painted a large exhibition picture for the National House of Representatives, but it was not purchased by the government. On the other hand the Corporation of New York commissioned him to paint the portrait of Lafayette, who was then visiting America. At the same time he became enthusiastic over the founding of a new society of artists, and was chosen the first president of the National Academy of Design.

His small capital was dwindling. His efforts to paint historical pictures rather than portraits, and his share in paying off certain debts of his father’s, had made great inroads on the money he had saved. To add to his misfortunes his wife died in February, 1825. In 1829 he went abroad, visited the great galleries of Europe, and tried to find a more ready market for his historical studies. It was on his return from France in 1832 that the conversation of Dr. Jackson and the other passengers turned his thoughts in the direction of an electric telegraph.

Now came his gradual transformation from painter to inventor. His brothers gave him a room with them in New York, and this became his studio and laboratory at one and the same time. Easels and plastercasts were mixed with type-moulds and galvanic batteries, and Morse turned from a portrait to his working model of telegraph transmitter and back again a dozen times a day. He painted to make his living, but his interest was steadily turning to his invention.

He had many friends, and a wide reputation as a man of great intellectual ability, and in a few years he was appointed the first Professor of the Literature of the Arts of Design in the new University of the City of New York. This gave him a home in the university building on Washington Square, and there he moved his apparatus. At this time he was chiefly concerned with the question of how far a message could be sent by the electric current, for it was known that the current grew feebler in proportion to the resistance of the wire through which it travels. He had learned that the electro-magnet at the receiving end would at any great distance become so enfeebled that it would fail to make any record of the message. His solution of this difficulty was a relay system. He explained this to Professor Gale, a colleague at the university, who later testified as to Morse’s work. “Suppose,” said the inventor, “that in experimenting on twenty miles of wire we should find that the power of magnetism is so feeble that it will not move a lever with certainty a hair’s breadth: that would be insufficient, it may be, to write or print; yet it would be sufficient to close and break another or a second circuit twenty miles farther, and this second circuit could be made, in the same manner, to break and close a third circuit twenty miles farther, and so on around the globe.” Gale proved of great assistance. So far Morse had only used his recorder over a few yards of wire, his electro-magnet had been of the simplest make, and his battery was a single pair of plates. Gale suggested that his simple electro-magnet, with its few turns of thick wire, should be replaced by one with a coil of long thin wire. In this way a much feebler current would be able to excite the magnet, and the recorder would mark at a much greater distance. He also urged the use of a much more powerful battery. The two men now erected a working telegraph in the rooms of the university, and found that they could send and receive messages at will.

It is interesting to read Morse’s own words in regard to the beginning of his work at Washington Square. “There,” he said, “I immediately commenced, with very limited means, to experiment upon my invention. My first instrument was made up of an old picture or canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old wooden clock, moved by a weight to carry the paper forward; three wooden drums, upon one of which the paper was wound and passed over the other two; a wooden pendulum suspended to the top piece of the picture or stretching frame and vibrating across the paper as it passed over the centre wooden drum; a pencil at the lower end of the pendulum, in contact with the paper; an electro-magnet fastened to a shelf across the picture or stretching frame, opposite to an armature made fast to the pendulum; a type rule and type for breaking the circuit, resting on an endless band, composed of carpet-binding, which passed over two wooden rollers moved by a wooden crank.