It denoted at
first a system of semaphores, or tall poles with movable arms,
and other signaling apparatus, set within sight of one another.
There was such a telegraph line between Dover and London at the
time of Waterloo; and this telegraph began relating the news of
the battle, which had come to Dover by ship, to anxious London,
when a fog set in and the Londoners had to wait until a courier
on horseback arrived. And, in the very years when the real
telegraph was coming into being, the United States Government,
without a thought of electricity, was considering the
advisability of setting up such a system of telegraphs in the
United States.
The telegraph is one of America's gifts to the world. The honor
for this invention falls to Samuel Finley Breese Morse, a New
Englander of old Puritan stock. Nor is the glory that belongs to
Morse in any way dimmed by the fact that he made use of the
discoveries of other men who had been trying to unlock the
secrets of electricity ever since Franklin's experiments. If
Morse discovered no new principle, he is nevertheless the man of
all the workers in electricity between his own day and Franklin's
whom the world most delights to honor; and rightly so, for it is
to such as Morse that the world is most indebted. Others knew;
Morse saw and acted.
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