Strother, don't be
an artist. It means beggary. Your life depends upon people who
know nothing of your art and care nothing for you. A house dog
lives better, and the very sensitiveness that stimulates an
artist to work keeps him alive to suffering."*
* Prime, p. 424.
In 1835 Morse received an appointment to the teaching staff of
New York University and moved his workshop to a room in the
University building in Washington Square. "There," says his
biographer*, "he wrought through the year 1836, probably the
darkest and longest year of his life, giving lessons to pupils in
the art of painting while his mind was in the throes of the great
invention." In that year he took into his confidence one of his
colleagues in the University, Leonard D. Gale, who assisted him
greatly, in improving the apparatus, while the inventor himself
formulated the rudiments of the telegraphic alphabet, or Morse
Code, as it is known today. At length all was ready for a test
and the message flashed from transmitter to receiver. The
telegraph was born, though only an infant as yet. "Yes, that room
of the University was the birthplace of the Recording Telegraph,"
said Morse years later. On September 2, 1837, a successful
experiment was made with seventeen hundred feet of copper wire
coiled around the room, in the presence of Alfred Vail, a
student, whose family owned the Speedwell Iron Works, at
Morristown, New Jersey, and who at once took an interest in the
invention and persuaded his father, Judge Stephen Vail, to
advance money for experiments.
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