Two miles of wire that made history in Morristown: The first instant message

Morse and Vail, inventors of the first 'instant message.' Image: Historic Speedwell
Morse and Vail, inventors of the first 'instant message.' Image: Historic Speedwell
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By Peggy Carroll

It was a far from perfect machine. It was a bit crude, a little unfinished.

But it worked. And on Jan. 6, 1838, it made history.

On that day, at the Morristown home of Judge Stephen Vail and his family,
it sent a message through two miles of wiring spread throughout the room in what is now called Historic Speedwell.

The message: “A patient waiter is no loser.”

The men responsible: Samuel F.B. Morse, the inventor of what he called the telegraph (“Tele” for “far” and “graph” for “writing”) and Alfred Vail, a son of the house and a gifted machinist who had refined Morse’s first awkward creation to make it suitable to show and sell.

Morse and Vail, inventors of the first 'instant message.' Image: Historic Speedwell
Morse and Vail, inventors of the first ‘instant message.’ Image: Historic Speedwell

It worked then and less than a week later, the telegraph got wider attention.

On Jan. 11, several hundred men and women crowded into Speedwell for the first public demonstration of the machine. They gathered in what is now called the Factory Building, a site now dubbed the “Birthplace of the Telegraph.”

This time the short message was very practical: “Railroad cars just arrived. 345 passengers.”

The audience was most impressed.

The local newspaper, The Journeyman, reported that with the telegraph “time and distance are annihilated and the most distant points of the country are by this means brought into the nearest neighborhood.”

A message that could take days to travel from New York to Washington now arrived in minutes.

It was a tool used by everyone from newspaper reporters (who were to send Civil War dispatches by telegraph) to railway managers.

Alfred Vail was central to its success. He had first seen the machine while visiting New York University, his alma mater, and had by chance witnessed one of Morse’s early telegraph experiments.

Alfred Vail
Alfred Vail

Fascinated, Vail, who had worked as a machinist at the Speedwell Iron Works owned by his father, offered to help. He negotiated an agreement with Morse, a failed artist and NYU professor.

He offered to work on the telegraph technology and to pay all the expenses. He then persuaded his father to give the project financial backing and he took up the task of making a working model at Speedwell.

In the few months after the Morristown demonstration, Morse and Vail took the telegraph to New York, to Philadelphia and to President Martin Van Buren – and they obtained from Congress a $30,000 grant to build the first line in 1844 from Washington to Baltimore.

Morse became world famous; Vail, not so much. Though the terms of the agreement with Morse stipulated that Alfred and his brother and partner George would receive 25 percent of proceeds, he actually received little – even though he continued to develop new technology. He was responsible for the sending key and the improved recording registers and relay magnets.

There also are those who believe that he had more to do with the Morse Code than the man it is named for.

He and Morse were the first two telegraph operators on that first line and Vail helped build and manage several other lines between 1845 and 1848, when he left the business. He was paid at the time only $900 a year.

Nor did Morse acknowledge his contributions or those of his family– even though the Vails were picking up the bills.

Few people, in fact, know much if anything about Alfred Vail.

Historic Speedwell, operated by the Morris County Park Commission, exists to correct that. In tours and hands-on exhibits, it tells the story of the Vails and the part that the Factory Building, now a National Historic Landmark, played in the invention of the telegraph.

Further information is available on the Historic Speedwell website.

Season: April through October
April-June: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am-5 pm, closed on Sunday and Monday
July-October: Wednesday through Saturday, 10 am-6 pm, Sunday noon-6pm, closed on Monday and Tuesday. Historic Speedwell is open some Sundays April-June. Check its calendar of events. Guided tours are available of the Vail Home, Factory Building and Wheelhouse.

 

1 COMMENT

  1. Good story but it downplays the important role played by George Vail, who had also befriended Morse and shared his views about the Andrew Jackson Downing’s landscape and design theories. Stephen did not approve of his son’s association with Morse because Morse let the brothers fund his activities and he felt they should focus on making the telegraph profitable instead of roaming the local countryside searching for sites for other projects.
    Stephen’s daughter had married a Cutler and lived next door, on the other side of the lake. Morse and the Vail brothers often went to her home to avoid their father, especially while George was building Willow Hall.
    Stephen had moved to his newly renovated homestead, now a part of Speedwell Village. George’s home is now also listed on the National Register of historic places and open to the public by appointment. It serves as Headquarters for the Passaic River Coalition.

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