The Construction of America’s First Long Distance Telegraph Line, in the Hand of Its Creator Samuel Morse

An important and extremely uncommon early document in the history of telecommunications

The idea of using electricity to communicate over distance is said to have occurred to Morse during a conversation aboard ship when he was returning from Europe in 1832. Michael Faraday’s recently invented electromagnet was much discussed by the ship’s passengers, and when Morse came to understand how it worked, he speculated that it might be possible to send a coded message over a wire. He set to work developing such an idea, and had some success; but he also encountered obstacles. Then Professor Leonard Gale showed Morse how he could regularly boost the strength of a signal and overcome the distance problems he had experienced by using a relay system Joseph Henry had invented. Morse’s system ultimately used an automatic sender consisting of a plate with long and short metal bars representing the Morse code equivalent of the alphabet and numbers. The operator slid a pointer connected to a battery and the sending wire across the bars, and immediately the appropriate dots and dashes were sent over the line. The receiver used an electromagnet with a stylus (a pen-like instrument) on the end of an arm. When the magnet operated, the stylus made an impression or tiny dent in a paper tape which wound past a clockwork motor. The tape was then read by the operator. By December 1837, Morse had enough confidence in his invention to apply to the federal government for an appropriation to run a telegraph line of 40 miles, and during the next year he conducted demonstrations of his telegraph both in New York and Washington. However, when the economic disaster known as the Panic of 1837 took hold of the nation and caused a long depression, Morse was forced to wait for better times.

By late 1842, the country was beginning to recover economically, and Morse again asked Congress for financial assistance. By now Morse had gained the attention of Maine Congressman Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith, who became a shareholder in his venture. In August of that year Morse wrote influential Congressman William W. Boardman, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, asking that Congress appropriate funds for him, but no action was then taken. But in December 1842 Morse strung wires between two committee rooms in the Capitol and sent messages back and forth. Smith then authored a bill to appropriate $30,000 for a line between Washington and Baltimore.

At the start of January 1843 it seemed that Morse’s telegraph bill had been fast tracked and was ready to be considered by Congress. It passed in March 1843. In the late spring and summer, Morse began preparing for the construction of this line.

Document signed, New York, July 10, 1843, “Expenditures on account of Contingencies for the Electric Magnetic Telegraph for the month ending July 10th 1843…” Among the people receiving funding were his assistant, Alfred Vail, who played an important role in Morse’s project, would soon receive Morse’s first message in Baltimore and then successfully returned the same message back to Morse in the national Capitol Building’s Rotunda. Vail had the responsibility to superintend the machinery requirements for the new line, Stokell, the New York clock maker who created the registers, and several others who created the machinery apparatus to make the communication possible.

“Sillick and Nichols, blocks
Frye and Shaw, work on instruments
J. Stokell, clockwork
M. Q. Wood, Grindstone
Gay and Tiebault, forge
S.E. Morse and Co, rent
T.J. Wood, tools [telegrapher who would go on to serve in the Civil War telegraph office]
Wm. Gregory, sundries
Dr. Chilton
“Floe” company, iron work
A. Vail, sundries”

Construction of the telegraph finished in May of the following year, and it was officially opened on May 24, 1844, when Morse sent the now-famous words, ‘What hath God wrought,’ from the Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol to Mount Clare Station in Baltimore. This was the first long-distance telegraph system set up to run overland in the United States-the first step of a communications revolution.

This is a very uncommon document. A search of public sale records going back 40 years discloses only two documents or letters of Morse from 1843 relating to the telegraph having reached that market in the last decade.