As
he came down to breakfast the next morning, a young lady entered,
and, coming toward him with a smile, exclaimed:
"I have come to congratulate you!"
"For what, my dear friend?" asked the professor, of the young
lady, who was Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, daughter of his friend the
Commissioner of Patents.
"On the passage of your bill."
The professor assured her it was not possible, as he remained in
the Senate-Chamber until nearly midnight, and it was not reached.
She then informed him that her father was present until the
close, and, in the last moments of the session, the bill was
passed without debate or revision. Professor Morse was overcome
by the intelligence, so joyful and unexpected, and gave at the
moment to his young friend, the bearer of these good tidings, the
promise that she should send the first message over the first
line of telegraph that was opened.*
*Prime, p. 465.
Morse and his partners* then proceeded to the construction of the
forty-mile line of wire between Baltimore and Washington. At this
point Ezra Cornell, afterwards a famous builder of telegraphs and
founder of Cornell University, first appears in history as a
young man of thirty-six. Cornell invented a machine to lay pipe
underground to contain the wires and he was employed to carry out
the work of construction.
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