The excellence of marine illuminants and fog
signals today is largely due to his efforts. Though he was later
drawn into a controversy with Morse over the credit for the
invention of the telegraph, he used his influence to procure the
renewal of Morse's patent. He listened with attention to
Alexander Graham Bell, who had the idea that electric wires might
be made to carry the human voice, and encouraged him to proceed
with his experiments. "He said," Bell writes, "that he thought it
was the germ of a great invention and advised me to work at it
without publishing. I said that I recognized the fact that there
were mechanical difficulties in the way that rendered the plan
impracticable at the present time. I added that I felt that I had
not the electrical knowledge necessary to overcome the
difficulties. His laconic answer was, 'GET IT!' I cannot tell you
how much these two words have encouraged me."
Henry had blazed the way for others to work out the principles of
the electric motor, and a few experimenters attempted to follow
his lead. Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith of Brandon, Vermont,
built an electric car in 1835, which he was able to drive on the
road, and so made himself the pioneer of the automobile in
America. Twelve years later Moses G. Farmer exhibited at various
places in New England an electric-driven locomotive, and in 1851
Charles Grafton Page drove an electric car, on the tracks of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, from Washington to Bladensburg, at
the rate of nineteen miles an hour.
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