The Victorian Internet (5 page)

3.

ELECTRIC SKEPTICS

Although the practical working of it had been demonstrated on a small scale, the invention seemed altogether too chimerical
to be likely ever to prove of any worth. Again and again he was pronounced a visionary, and his scheme stigmatized as ridiculous,

—from the
NEW YORK TIMES
obituary

of Samuel Morse, 1873

T
HE TROUBLE WITH the electric telegraph was that, compared to the optical telegraphs that had come before it, it seemed more
like a conjuring trick than a means of communication. Anyone could see how an optical telegraph worked: Its arms or shutters
could be set in various positions, each of which corresponded to a different letter, word, or phrase. Electric telegraphs,
on the other hand, hardly did anything at all— they either rattled away, producing meaningless dots and dashes on a strip
of paper, or had needles that wiggled convulsively. What was the good of that? Both Morse in the United States and Cooke in
Britain soon realized that there was only one way they were ever going to convince the skeptics: build large-scale, working
systems and demonstrate their superiority to old-fashioned optical telegraphs. So each man set out to look for the money to
fund a demonstration telegraph line.

Morse thought his chance had come when a proposal was put before Congress for the construction of a line of Chappe-style telegraph
towers from New York to New Orleans. The secretary of the Treasury was asked to prepare a report "upon the propriety of establishing
a system of telegraphs for the United States," and a circular was issued to government officials and other interested parties
asking for comments. Morse eagerly replied, explaining the advantages of an electrical design and pointing out that he had
successfully sent messages through ten miles of cable. He requested funding for a demonstration network to show his telegraph
working over a reasonable distance.

In i838, Morse traveled to Washington with his apparatus and demonstrated it to government officials, but they were far from
won over. It's not hard to see why: He set up his equipment on a desk, with sending and receiving stations only a few feet
apart, and a huge coil of wire in between, and his talk of dots and dashes and codes didn't seem to have much to do with sending
messages from one place to another. And by this time Congress seemed to have lost interest in the telegraph scheme.

Morse went to Europe in i838-39 to popularize his invention and obtain patents for it there. In Britain, he crossed swords
with Cooke and Wheatstone, but when it became clear he had no chance of being granted a British patent in the face of their
objections, Morse moved on to continental Europe, where he spent several fruitless months trying to attract support.

C
OOKE AND WHEATSTONE were only a little more successful. Cooke's father was a friend of Francis Ronalds, whose telegraphic
experiments a few years earlier had been rejected by the Admiralty. So Cooke knew that he was unlikely to get anywhere if
he took his new invention to the British government. Instead, he identified a niche market for his product: the railway companies.
After successfully demonstrating their apparatus to officials of the London & Birmingham Railway in 1837, Cooke and Wheatstone
built an experimental telegraph link between Euston and Camden Town stations, a distance of a mile and a quarter, which worked
well and boded well for the future. Cooke even drew up plans for a telegraph system linking London to Birmingham, Manchester,
Liverpool, and Holyhead, which would be made available for public use. But the railway company suddenly went cold on the idea
and said it "did not intend to proceed further at present."

Cooke turned to the Great Western Railway, which eventually agreed to a thirteen-mile telegraph link between Paddington and
West Drayton, based on the five-needle system. Soon afterward, another telegraph system was installed on the Blackwall Railway,
a small line in London's docklands. The story goes that when some of the connecting wires broke, preventing three of the five
needles from working, the operators quickly improvised a new code, based on multiple wiggles, which only required two needles.
At any rate, Cooke and Wheatstone soon realized there was no need for all five, which meant that subsequent installations
would require fewer wires and would be much cheaper.

But the personal rivalry between the two men over which of them was principally responsible for the invention of the telegraph
had, by this time, resurfaced. They eventually decided upon a gentlemanly way to resolve the matter: They appointed a panel
of two mutual friends to act as arbitrators and agreed to be bound by their decision. In April 1841, the arbitrators came
up with an artful compromise acceptable to both sides: "Whilst Mr. Cooke is entitled to stand alone, as the gentleman to whom
this country is indebted for having practically introduced and carried out the electric telegraph as a useful undertaking,
Professor Wheatstone is acknowledged as the scientific man whose profound and successful researches have already prepared
the public to receive it as a project capable of practical application." In other words, the panel declined to rule in favor
of either man. Almost immediately, the bickering started again.

Meanwhile, Cooke was planning to extend the Great Western Railway telegraph, but the company appeared to be losing interest.
So Cooke offered to take on the running of the lines himself. He brokered a deal whereby he extended the line eighteen miles
to Slough, this time with a two-needle telegraph, and could make the telegraph available to the public, on the condition that
railway messages were carried for free. By this stage he had spent hundreds of pounds of his father's money for very little
return. "At the beginning of 1843 we were at our lowest point of de­pression," he later wrote in his memoirs.

B
Y THE Time morse got back to the United States, having failed to make any progress with his telegraph in Europe, Congress
had still not got anywhere with its telegraph proposals, and his associates Gale and Vail were starting to worry that they
had backed a losing horse. But Morse stubbornly refused to give up. He wrote to Vail explaining that the failure of the telegraph
to take off "is not the fault of the invention, nor is it my neglect." In December 1842, he journeyed alone to Congress in
a final bid for funding. He strung wires between two committee rooms in the Capitol and sent messages back and forth—and,
for some reason, this time a numer of people believed him, and a bill was finally proposed allocating $3o,ooo toward building
an experimental line.

But not everyone was convinced. As Morse watched from the gallery, Representative Cave Johnson of Tennessee ridiculed the
proposal, saying that Congress might as well start funding research into mesmerism. Another skeptic joked that he had no objection
to mesmeric experiments, as long as they were performed on Mr. Johnson. Amid the laughter, an amendment was put forward allocating
a half share of the $3o,ooo to a Mr. Fisk, a well-known proponent of mesmerism. This amendment was, fortunately, rejected,
and two days later the bill was passed by a vote of eighty-nine to eighty-three—a narrow margin which reflected the widespread
unease that the electric telegraph might still turn out to be nothing more than an elaborate conjuring trick. But seventy
congressmen chose not to vote at all, "to avoid the responsibility of spending the public money for a machine they could not
under­stand."

Even though Morse now had the money, he still had to overcome this skepticism. He set up his apparatus again and demonstrated
the transmission of messages over a five-mile-long coil of wire to any congressmen who would come and witness it. But this
failed to convince them. On one occasion he transmitted the message "MR. BROWN OF INDIANA is HERE" down the line, walked over
to the receiving apparatus, and proudly held up the strip of paper with the message spelled out in dots and dashes. "It won't
do. That doesn't prove anything," whispered one onlooker. "That's what I call pretty thin," said another. Senator Oliver Smith
of Indiana, who attended one of Morse's demonstrations, recalled that he "watched his countenance closely, to see if he was
not deranged . . . and I was assured by other senators after we left the room that they had no confidence in it."

Morse decided to press ahead all the same with a line from Washington to Baltimore, a distance of about forty miles. The two
towns were already linked by railway, and he obtained permission to run the telegraph cable alongside the railway. The Baltimore
& Ohio Railroad Company was more than a little suspicious; it granted permission on the condition that the line could be built
"without embarrassment to the operations of the company" and, just to cover itself both ways, demanded free use of the telegraph
if indeed it did turn out to work.

In the spring of 1844, an observer, John W. Kirk, was appointed by Congress to keep an eye on Morse, who was described as
"impracticable or crazy" and whose invention was regarded as mere "foolishness." But although he started out as skeptical
as everyone else, Kirk soon came up with a scheme that would verify whether or not all those dots and dashes actually corresponded
to useful information. The Whig National Convention was due to take place in Baltimore on May 1, and although the line had
not been completed by then, it did reach from Washington to within fifteen miles of Baltimore. By successfully transmitting
the names of the convention's nominees, Morse would be able to prove the usefulness of his invention.

Once announced, the names of the nominees were duly rushed by train to Vail, who was installed at a temporary platform fifteen
miles outside Baltimore. Vail then transmitted the list to Morse in Washington, where a large crowd had gathered at the railroad
depot. The names were announced to the crowd, and were confirmed when the first train arrived from Baltimore sixty-four minutes
later-forcing even the staunchest skeptics to eat their words.

The line was soon completed to Baltimore, and on May 24, 1844, Morse officially inaugurated it by transmitting a message from
the Supreme Court chamber in Washington to Vail in Baltimore: "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT." The wonders of the electric telegraph
were written up in the newspapers, and Morse's success seemed assured.

Yet after a while he realized that everybody still thought of the telegraph as a novelty, as nothing more than an amusing
subject for a newspaper article, rather than the revolutionary new form of communication that he envisaged.

I
N BRITAIN, Cooke had by this time licensed the use of the Paddington-Slough line to a promoter, Thomas Home, who opened it
up for public demonstration. The poster printed to advertise this new attraction says a lot about the way it was perceived:
"Despatches sent instantaneously to and fro with the most confiding secrecy," it proclaimed. "Post Horses and Conveyances
of every description may be ordered by the electric telegraph to be in readiness on the arrival of a train, at either Paddington
or Slough Station." The
Morning Post
declared that the exhibition was "well worthy of a visit from all who love to see the wonders of science." Sending messages
to and fro was merely thought of as a scientific curiosity; the telegraph was evidently not regarded as a useful form of communication.
As the small print of the poster pointed out, "Messengers in constant attendance, so that communications received by telegraph
would be forwarded, if required, to any part of London, Windsor, Eton, & c." But this was seen as incidental to the main attraction.

The fame of the telegraph took a giant leap when it was used to announce the birth of Queen Victoria's second son, Alfred
Ernest, at Windsor on August 6, 1844. The
Times
was on the streets of London with the news within forty minutes of the announcement, declaring itself "indebted to the extraordinary
power of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph" for providing the information so quickly. Three trainloads of assorted lords and
gentry then left London for a celebratory banquet at Windsor, and the telegraph proved its use once again. The Duke of Wellington
forgot his dress suit, so he telegraphed London and asked for it to be sent on the following train. Fortunately, it arrived
in time for the royal banquet.

Another milestone for the telegraph was when it was used to apprehend Fiddler Dick, a notorious pickpocket, and his gang.
Their modus operandi involved robbing the crowds at a busy railway station and then escaping from the scene by train. Before
the telegraph, there was no way to send information faster than a speeding train, so their getaway was assured. However, the
presence of the telegraph alongside the Paddington-Slough line meant it was now possible to alert the police at the other
end before the train's arrival.

More famous still was the arrest of John Tawell on January 3, 1845, thanks to the telegraph. Tawell had murdered his mistress
in Slough, and when his crime was discovered he made a run for it and headed for London. He was dressed in a brown, unusual-looking
greatcoat. His description, "DRESSED LIKE A KWAKER" (since Cooke and Wheatstone's telegraphic alphabet had no " Q "), was
sent to London, where the police were able to meet the train and arrest Tawell before he had time to melt into the crowds.
"It may be observed," reported the
Times,
"that had it not been for the efficient aid of the electric telegraph, both at Slough and Paddington, the greatest difficulty
as well as delay would have occurred in the apprehension of the party now in custody." Tawell was subsequently convicted and
hanged, and the telegraph wires gained further notoriety as "the cords that hung John Tawell."

All of this enabled Thomas Home to print up a new edition of his poster. Now the telegraph was described as "an Exhibition
admitted by its numerous visitors to be the most interesting and attractive of any in this great Metropolis. In the list of
visitors are the illustrious names of several of Crowned Heads of Europe, and nearly the whole of the Nobility of England."
Home had evidently devised new ways to demonstrate the speed of the telegraph and made the most of its crime-fighting capabilities:
"Questions proposed by visitors will be asked by means of this apparatus and answers thereto will instantaneously be returned
by a person 20 miles off, who will also, at their request, ring a bell or fire a cannon, in an incredibly short space of time,
after the signal for his so doing so has been given. By its powerful agency murderers have been apprehended, thieves detected,
and lastly, which is of no little importance, the timely assistance of medical aid has been procured in cases which otherwise
would have proved fatal. The great national importance of this wonderful invention is so well known that any further allusion
here to its merits would be quite superfluous." Once again, the telegraph's potential use as a means of sending useful messages
between Slough and London was buried in the small print at the bottom of the poster.