Morse's patent : Full exposure of Dr. Chas. T. Jackson's pretensions to the invention of the American electro-magnetic telegraph / by Hon. Amos Kendall.

  • Kendall, Amos, 1789-1869.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Morse's patent : Full exposure of Dr. Chas. T. Jackson's pretensions to the invention of the American electro-magnetic telegraph / by Hon. Amos Kendall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    merit's inspection of my machinery, as there planned. This machinery consisted chiefly, as you well know, of a system of signs which were numerals, to be read by intervals; types, and apparatus to arrange the numbers for transmission, a lever to mark on the register by closing and breaking the circuit, and a register moving by clock machinery to receive the marks at the proper times. So much for the invention at least you very properly con- cede to me—you allow explicitly in your letter that I invented these, and now what has chemistry or electro-magnestim to do with any of them? But these, you'say, were wholly imprac- ticable ; and, as you pointed out my errors, you, perhaps, brought your superior knowledge of chemistry and electro-mag- netism into the new mode which you suggested, and which was practicable of course ; you can point out then, doubtless, this prac- ticable improvement, or rather substitute for mine. The appara- tus which I invented on board the Sully was gradually matured, and was constructed for and adapted to the use of one wire, or a single circuit. Now, this you have often asserted to me to be im- practicable ; and, although you never devised, to my knowledge, any other method, until I informed you of mine with an electro- magnet, you now talk in your letters of using 24 wires and 24 magnets, and of marking in real type. Now, what have these to do with my invention on board the Sully ? The use of 24 wires was probably adopted by you from a hint of mine in the very out- set, for it was my first and most natural thought; but having de- vised what I considered a much more simple and less expensive mode, to wit—using one wire—I almost immediately relinquished the first for my new mode ; whether you derived the hint or not from me, is to me of little consequence, for, provided you use nothing that was invented by me upon the packet of 24 wires, you are at liberty to use them as you please. If you have in- vented a telegraph of 24 wires, and a mode of marking in real type, why do you claim to be a mutual inventor of mine, which is adapted to one wire or a single circuit, and which you at the same time pronounce impracticable? Your claim to any share in my impracticable mode is, to say the least, very singular. Un- fortunately for the sustainment of your claim, the plan which I devised on board the ship, the plan of numerals, type, levers, &c, which you pronounce wholly impracticable, and the use of one wire or a single circuit, which you pronounce impracticable, is the very plan I have now in successful operation. This assertion you will perhaps again say is inconsistent with what I have said in my former letter, for you charge me in your last with strange inconsistency which you cannot reconcile, because I stated that in consequence of your not testing by experiment a mode of mark- ing, which we had devised together, I had carried into effect another mode entirely original with me. The only inconsistency is in your own misapprehension of my letter. You apply my re-