USA > New York > New York City > History of New York City : embracing an outline sketch of events from 1609 to 1830, and a full account of its development from 1830 to 1884, Volume I > Part 41
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Meanwhile Livingston. Wells & Co.'s express had been established. They carried letters in opposition to the government. Wells had been Harnden's agent at Albany. He first extended the business to Buffalo, and thence westward. The first line extended beyond that city was that of Wells, Fargo & Dunning. In 1848 John Butterfield established an express, and was soon joined by Mr. Wasson. In 1850 the compa- nies of Wells, Fargo & Dunning and Butterfield & Wasson were con-
* Alvin Adams was born at Windsor, Vermont, on June 16, 1804. His parents both died when he was about eight years of age, and Alvin lived with his oldest brother on the farm which was their patrimony until he was sixteen years of age. Then he began to desire a broader sight of the social world, and went to Woodstock, the capital of Windsor County. Here he engaged himself to the principal tavern-keeper in the town, who owned a line of stages that ran between that place and Concord, N. H. With this publican Alvin stayed about five years, and then went to Boston, where, after trying several employments, he started in business for himself as a produce commission mer- chant. In 1837 he discontinued that business, went to New York and thence to St. Louis, but soon returned from the latter place. In May, 1540, he started in the express business, as mentioned in the text, and was wonderfully successful. His chief characteristics were energy and a preference for things of magnitude. His moral charac- ter was unblemished, and his honor and probity were proverbial. Mr. Adams died at his home.in Watertown, Mass., September 1, 1877, at the age of about seventy-three years. He married Miss Anne R. Bridge, of Boston, and left a widow, two sons, and a daughter.
In addition to his rich moral qualities, Mr. Adams was endowed with a genial disposi- tion and a capacity of pleasing all with whom he became acquainted.
One of the carliest and most efficient pioneers in the express business was Edward S. Sanford, who died in 1992. He was for over forty years prominently identified with the management of the Adata- Express Company.
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solidated. By the union of the three companies above named the American Express Company was formed, which soon became a power. ful rival of the Adams Express Company. These two associations are now the leading express companies in the world.
It was estimated at the time of the establishment of the Americ .: Express Company (about 1850) that the aggregate express agents trav. elled in the discharge of their duties 30,000 miles a day. In 1852 they travelled about 405,000 miles a day, over nearly 80,000 miles of road. The aggregate companies then employed about 22,000 men and over 4000 horses, and had fully 10,000 business offices. They employ in the business nearly $30,000,000.
This is the product in less than fifty years of the small seed, "like a grain of mustard seed," planted in James W. Hale's news-room in Wall Street by William F. Harnden, in the form of a small carpet-bag and a capital of $10. The city of New York, where the express business originated, has continued to be the focal point of the business. From it nearly or quite all the express lines radiate as from a common centre of impulse. There are eleven foreign expresses emanating from New York. There are also two domestic expresses in the city, that of Dodd (N. Y. Transfer Co.) and Westcott's Express Company. The value of the express system to the city is simply incalculable.
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CHAPTER XXI.
S' SIMULTANEOUSLY with the beginning of the express system, which so greatly increased the facilities for exchanges of every kind, appeared the dawn of the era of the electro-magnetic telegraph system, which has superseded and far outstripped the steamboat, the railway, and the express systems in the interchange of thought and the diffusion of knowledge throughout the civilized world.
Although for nearly forty years men have been so familiar with the operations of this mighty motor that it is commonplace to the common mind, yet to-day, to the apprehension of profound thinkers and skilled scientists, this invisible agent, in its essence and origin, is an undiscov- ered and apparently undiscoverable mystery which human ken may not fathom, nor of which human imagination may conceive a theory.
In our profound ignorance we may with reverence regard it as did Pope, who, in speaking of the universe, said of creation :
" Whose body Nature is, and God the soul ";
and then, with dim discernment of the truth, thus spoke of its manifes- tation to man :
" Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze ; Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ; It lives through all life, extends through all extent ; Spreads undivided, operates unspent."
It was early in the year 1838 that Samuel Finley Breese Morse,* a
* Samuel Finley Breese Morse, LL.D., was a son of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, and was born in Charlestown, Mass., April 27, 1791. He.graduated at Yale College in 1810, and went to England the next year, where he studied the art of painting under Benjamin. West. On his return in 1815 he practised the art, chiefly in the line of portrait painting, in Boston, Charlestown, and New York. In the latter city he became the chief founder of the National Academy of the Arts of Design. in 1826. He went to Europe in 1829, and remained until 1832. While abroad he was elected professor of the literature of the arts of design in the new University of the City of New York. He had been a close student of chemical science, and had been interested in electrical experiments in France. While voyaging home in 1832 he conceived the idea of an electro magnetic recording telegraph, which, as is seen in the text, he afterward perfected. This subject absorbed his atten- tion largely during the remainder of his life. Yet from 1832 until about 1835 he was
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portrait and historical painter of rare merit, and then professor of the literature of the arts of design in the University of the City of New York, first made a partially public exhibition of his invention of an electro-magnetic recording telegraph. He did not pretend to be the discoverer of electro-magnetism, nor the first inventor of an electro- magnetic machine with dynamic power. These had been known long before. So early as the middle of the last century Dr. Franklin had produced a mechanical effect at a distance of half a mile from his elec- trical machine, by means of a wire stretched along the bank of the Schuylkill ; and other philosophers, from Franklin to Professors Henry and Wheatstone, had from time to time been approaching the solution of the great problem which Morse triumphantly solved-the problem of giving intelligence to the subtle power of electro-magnetism in its operations. Nay, more : the power of giving to it an audible language, as perfect and comprehensive to the skilful operator as the spoken English language.
While on a professional visit to Europe as an artist in 1832, Mr. Morse, who had enjoyed many conversations with his friend, Professor J. Freeman Dana, and heard his lectures on electro-magnetism at the
much engaged in the pursuit of his profession. He possessed the elements of a superior artist, and was rapidly gaining in popularity as an historical painter when his mind and efforts were directed to the consideration of the telegraph, which gave him terrestrial immortality, world-wide fame, and a competent fortune. The consequence is, his biogra- phers have passed over his most interesting career as an artist with slight mention. His journals and note-books on art, in the possession of his family, denote his great devo- tion to his favorite pursuit, and reveal his character in its really most interesting aspect.
Monarchs of Europe testified their appreciation of Professor Morse's beneficent ser- vices in producing a recording telegraph by gifts of money and " orders." In many ways, at home and abroad, he was the recipient of honors from his countrymen. In 1856 a banquet was given him in London by British telegraph companies, and in 1858 he par- ticipated in a banquet given in his honor in Paris by about one hundred Americans, rep- resenting nearly every State in the Republic.
In 1868.a bronze statue of Professor Morse was erceted in Central Park, New York, and paid for by the voluntary contributions of telegraph employes. It was unveiled by Bryant, the poet, in June, 1871, and that evening, at a public reception given him at the Academy of Music, Professor Morse, with one of the instruments first employed on the Baltimore and Washington line, sent a message of greeting to all the principal cities on the continent, and to several on the transatlantic hemisphere. His last public act was the unveiling of the statue of Franklin in Printing-House Square, New York, January 17, 1872. ' He died on the 24 of April following, at his home in New York. .
Professor Morse was the originator of the idea of submarine telegraphy, as the narration in the text certifies. He lived to see it in successful operation. He also lived to see performed, what he had long believed to be a possibility namely, the transmission of despatches over the same wire each way at the same moment. The philosophy of this feat is yet an unsolved riddle to electricians.
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Athenaum, made it a special study to ascertain what scientific men abroad had discovered in that special field of investigation. He was familiar with the fable-prophecy of Strada, a Jesuit priest. in 1649, con- cerning an electric telegraph, and was very earnest in his pursuit of in- formation. He was satisfied that no telegraph proper-no instrument for writing at a distance-had yet been invented.
Morse became much interested in a recent discovery in France of the means for obtaining an electric spark from a magnet, and in his home- ward-bound voyage in the ship Sully, from Havre, in the autumn of 1832, that discovery was the principal topic of conversation among his cultivated fellow-passengers. After much deep thought a sudden mental illumination enabled Mr. Morse to conceive not only the idea of an electro-magnetic and chemical recording telegraph, but the plan of an instrument for effecting such a result. Before the Sully reached New York he had made drawings and specifications of such an instru- ment, which he exhibited to his fellow-passengers.
Other occupations absorbed Mr. Morse's attention for two or three years afterward, and the grand idea was allowed to slumber in his mind. He was appointed to the professorship already mentioned, in the University of the City of New York. Finally he again turned his thoughts toward the production of a recording electro-magnetic tele- graph, and in November, 1835, he had completed the rude instrument which his family preserve at their house near Poughkeepsie. It em- bodied the general mechanical principles of the machines now in use.
Pursuing his experiments, in July, 1837, Professor Morse was ena- bled, by means of two instruments, to communicate from as well as to distant points. Scores of persons saw the telegraph in operation at the university in the late summer and early autumn of 1537, and pitied the dreamer because he was foolishly wasting his time and high genius as an artist in playing with what seemed to be a useless scientific toy.
The great city-then containing a population of about three hundred thousand-full of intellectual, moral, and material activities of every kind ; rapidly extending in commerce, manufactures, the mechanical arts, architectural beauty, wealth, and moral, religious, social, and benevolent institutions ; in a word, endowed with everything which constitutes a prosperous and enlightened community-the great city did not dream of the effulgence which was about to overspread it, and make it conspicuous for all time, by a discovery unparalleled in impor- tance in the history of civilization. And yet that effulgence at first seemed like a waxing aurora. It appeared dimly when, in response to invitations like the following, quite a large number of intelligent and
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influential citizens assembled in Professor Morse's room in the uni- versity :
" Professor Morse requests the honor of Thomas S. Cummings, Esq., and family's company in the Geological Cabinet of the University, Washington Square, to witness the operation of the electro-magnetic telegraph, at a private exhibition of it to a few friends, previous to its leaving the city for Washington.
" The apparatus will be prepared at precisely twelve o'clock, on Wednesday, 24th in- stant. The time being limited, punctuality is specially requested.
" New York University, January 22, 1838."
A goodly company of believers, doubters, and critics were assem- bled. There stood the instrument, with copper wire coiled around the room attached to it. Professor Morse requested his visitors to give him brief messages for transmission. These were sent around the circuit and read by one who had no knowledge of the words that had been given to the operator. In compliment to Mr. Cummings, who was present, and who had recently been promoted to the military rank of general, one of the gentlemen present handed to Professor Morse the following message :
"ATTENTION THE UNIVERSE! BY KINGDOMS, RIGHT WHEEL !''
This was distinctly written, letter by letter, in the newly invented telegraphic alphabet, on a strip of paper moved by clock-work. As- tonishment filled the minds of the company, as they with grave pon- derings witnessed the seeming miracle that had been wrought. The sentence was prophetic. It was a call to attention by the mundane universe to which it was about to speak, and has been speaking ever since. Five days afterward the New York Journal of Commerce con- tained the following sentence :
" THE TELEGRAPH .- We did not witness the operations of Professor Morse's electro- magnetic telegraph on Wednesday last, but we learn that the numerous company of sci- entific persons who were present pronounced it entirely successful. Intelligence was instantly transmitted through a circuit of ten miles, and legibly written on a cylinder at the extremity of the circuit."
Professor Morse now started for Washington to seek government aid in perfecting and testing his invention. He accepted an invitation to stop in Philadelphia and exhibit his discovery to the committee on the arts and sciences, of the Franklin Institute. Their verdict was highly commendatory, and on repeating this fact to his brother, the late Sidney E. Morse,* that gentleman responded in words that exhib- ited great prophetic prescience. He said :
* Sidney Edwards Morse was born in Charlestown, Mass .. February 7, 1704. He grad. nated at Yale College in 1811 ; entered the famous law school at Litchfield, Conn., but
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" Your invention, measuring it by the power which it will give man to accomplish his plans, is not only the greatest invention of the age, but the greatest invention of any age. I see, as an almost immediate effect, that the surface of the carth will be net- worked with wire, and every wire will be a nerve, conveying to every part intelligence of what is doing in every other part. The earth will become a huge animal with ten million hands, and in every hand a pen to record whatever the directing soul inay dictate. No limit can be assigned to the value of the invention."
Sidney E. Morse was then the editor and proprietor of the New York Observer, now (1883) the oldest weekly newspaper in the city of New York, having been published sixty consecutive years. It is ably edited by the Rev. S. I. Prime, D.D., who has been connected with it as editor and proprietor since 1840 .*
preferring literature to the legal profession, he established the Boston Recorder, the first so-called religious newspaper issued in America. That was in 1815, when he was twenty- one years of age. In 1823, in connection with his younger brother, Richard C., he founded the New York Observer, also a " religious newspaper," which he, as senior editor, conducted with great ability and success until 1858, when he disposed of his interest in the paper. Like his brother the professor, Mr. Sidney Morse was possessed of an inventive genius. In connection with that brother he invented a fire-engine, in 1817. In 1820 he published a small geography for schools, and in 1839, in connection with an- other, he invented a process for producing maps and other outline pictures to be printed typographically. This process was first practically applied to the production of maps for a new edition of his geography, of which 100,000 copies were sold the first year. He called the process Cerography. Its product was a crude prototype of the plates of what is now known as the Moss photographic process. During the latter years of his life Mr. Morse devoted much time and study to an invention for making rapid deep-sea sound. ings. He died December 23, 1871.
* Samuel Irenæus Prime, D.D., is a leader of the conservative religious press of our country. He is of clerical ancestry. His great-grandfather, the Rev. Ebenezer Prime, was a graduate of Yale and a distinguished scholar and divine before the period of the Revolution. His grandfather, Dr. Benjamin Young Prime, was a graduate of Princeton College, and was an accomplished physician. He was a man of varied learning, writing both poetry and prose freely in Greek, Latin, French, and English. He wrote many popular songs and ballads during the Revolution. The father of S. Irenmens Prime was the Rev. Nathaniel S. Prime, D.D., who died in 1855. He, too, was a graduate of Prince- ton, and was distinguished for his scholarly attainments and fervid eloquence as a Pres- byterian preacher.
The subject of this sketch was born at Ballston, N. Y., on November 4, 1812. While he was yet an infant his parents removed to Cambridge, Washington County, N. Y., and there his boyhood was spent. Bright and studious, he was fitted for college at the age. of eleven years. But he was nearly fourteen years of age before he was permitted to enter Williams College. He was graduated with one of the highest honors of his class before he was seventeen years old. Studying theology at Princeton, he entered upon the duties of the Christian ministry before he was twenty-one years of age, at Ballston Spa, near his birthplace. Hle labored with great earnestness and zeal ; and, overworked at the end of a year, he was compelled by failing health to leave the pulpit for a while.
Mr. Prime resumed clerical duties in Matteawan, Duchess County, where for about three years he labored most earnestly and acceptably, when again his health gave way. It
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Professor Morse exhibited his wonderful invention to government officials and members of Congress, but met with little encouragement : so he filed a caveat in the Patent Office and went to Europe to serk
now became evident to him that his physical strength was not adequate to the sustention of continuous labor in the vineyard which he had chosen for his life-task, and he turned his attention to literature and the field of journalism. In 1840 he became assistant edit .. of the New York Observer. With only one slight interval, he has been editorially con- nected with the Observer until now, a period of forty.three years. That interval was in 1849 when he was appointed secretary of the American Bible Society. He soon found that the much public speaking which the duties of that office required was too much for him to endure, when he resigned and resumed his connection with the Observer.
In 1853 Dr. Prime tried the advantages of foreign travel, on account of frequent failing health, when his brother, the Rev. E. D. G. Prime, became associate editor of the Observer. He spent some time in Europe and extended his travels to Egypt and Pales- tine. During that time he enriched the columns of the Observer with a most valuable series of letters over the signature of " Irenaus, " which were afterward published in book form. In 1858 Mr. Morse sold his interest in the Observer property to Mr. Prime, since which time the latter has been the chief editor and proprietor of this venerable but vigorous and progressive newspaper.
Dr. Prime has been all through life a most industrious laborer, especially in the field of literature, and a most earnest and faithful worker in various societies for the promo- tion of Christianity and good living. He is the author of more than forty volumes, many ot them not bearing his name. They have been issued by excellent publishers-Harpers. Appletons, Randolph, and Carter. Among them, as most prominent, may be mentioned " The Old White Meeting-House, or Reminiscences of a Country Congregation," 1845 ; " Travels in Europe and the East," two volumes, 1855 ; " Letters from Switzerland," 1860 ; " The Alhambra and the Kremlin," 1873 ; " The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse," 1874 ; " Under the Trees," 1874; " Songs of the Soul " (selections), 1874; four vol- umes on " Prayer and its Answers."
Dr. Prime is as " busy as a bee" in social and religious work. He is president of the New York Association for the Advancement of Science and Art, vice-president and director of the American Tract Society, ex-corresponding secretary and director of the American Bible Society, vice president and director of the American and Foreign Chris- tian Union, corresponding secretary of the Evangelical Alliance of the United States, director of the American Colonization Society, director and member of the executive committee of the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime, member of the Inter- national Code Committee, trustee of Williams College, and ex-president and a trustee of Wells College for Women. Besides these offices and trusts, he is identified with many institutions in the Presbyterian Church, of which he is a member. None of these offices does Dr. Prime hold as sineenres, but he is a working member -- generally a " wheel. horse" bearing the brunt-attending all meetings, and giving his time gratuitously to every cause which he undertakes to promote.
Dr. Prime is eminently conservative in all things. He is earnest in controversy. Right or wrong, he deals telling blows. In the social circle he is one of the most genial of men, full of wit and humor and pleasant repartee. In the pulpit he is always im- pressive, and his arguments are convincing. As a speaker he is easy, graceful, impas- sioned, and marked by simplicity. He bears the burden of more than threescore and ten years with case. Dr. Prime received his honorary degree from Hampden-Sidney Col- lege, Virginia.
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the countenance of some foreign government. He was unsuccessful. England would not grant him a patent, and from France he received only a brevet d'invention, a worthless piece of paper that did not secure to him any special privilege. Yet among scientific men like Arago and Humboldt the invention excited wonder, admiration, and great expectations.
Professor Morse returned to New York in the steamship Grout West- ern, in April, 1839, disappointed but not disheartened. He waited nearly four years before Congress did anything for him. Meanwhile he had demonstrated the feasibility of marine telegraphy by laying a submarine cable across the harbor of New York, and working it per- fectly. This achievement won for Morse the gold medal of the Ameri- can Institute.
Soon after that Professor Morse suggested the feasibility of an ocean telegraph to connect Europe and America. In a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, John C. Spencer, in August, 1843, Morse said, after referring to certain scientific principles :
" The practical inference from this law is that telegraphic communication on the electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be established across the Atlantic Ocean. Startling as this may now seem, I am confident the time will come when this project will be realized."
In February, 1843, the late John P. Kennedy, of Baltimore, then in Congress, moved an appropriation of $30,000, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, for testing the merits of the telegraph. Cave Johnson, of Tennessee, proposed one half that sum to be used in testing the merits of mesmerism, while Houston, from the same State, thought Millerism ought to be included in the benefits of the appropri- ation. In this cheap wit and displays of ignorance the Speaker of the House (John White, of Kentucky) indulged ; but there were wiser men enough in the House to pass a bill making the desired appropria- tion on February 23d. When it went to the Senate it did not meet with sneers nor opposition, but at twilight on the last day of the session there were one hundred and nineteen bills before Morse's, and he retired to his lodgings with a heavy heart, satisfied he would have to wait another year. He paid his hotel bill, procured his railway ticket for home the next morning, and had just seventy-five cents left -- " all the money I had in the world that I could call my own," said the professor in relating the circumstance to the writer.
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