The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage Read Free Book Online Page A

progress with his telegraph in Europe, Congress
     had still not got anywhere with its telegraph proposals, and his associates Gale and Vail were starting to worry that they
     had backed a losing horse. But Morse stubbornly refused to give up. He wrote to Vail explaining that the failure of the telegraph
     to take off "is not the fault of the invention, nor is it my neglect." In December 1842, he journeyed alone to Congress in
     a final bid for funding. He strung wires between two committee rooms in the Capitol and sent messages back and forth—and,
     for some reason, this time a numer of people believed him, and a bill was finally proposed allocating $3o,ooo toward building
     an experimental line.
    But not everyone was convinced. As Morse watched from the gallery, Representative Cave Johnson of Tennessee ridiculed the
     proposal, saying that Congress might as well start funding research into mesmerism. Another skeptic joked that he had no objection
     to mesmeric experiments, as long as they were performed on Mr. Johnson. Amid the laughter, an amendment was put forward allocating
     a half share of the $3o,ooo to a Mr. Fisk, a well-known proponent of mesmerism. This amendment was, fortunately, rejected,
     and two days later the bill was passed by a vote of eighty-nine to eighty-three—a narrow margin which reflected the widespread
     unease that the electric telegraph might still turn out to be nothing more than an elaborate conjuring trick. But seventy
     congressmen chose not to vote at all, "to avoid the responsibility of spending the public money for a machine they could not
     under­stand."
    Even though Morse now had the money, he still had to overcome this skepticism. He set up his apparatus again and demonstrated
     the transmission of messages over a five-mile-long coil of wire to any congressmen who would come and witness it. But this
     failed to convince them. On one occasion he transmitted the message "MR. BROWN OF INDIANA is HERE" down the line, walked over
     to the receiving apparatus, and proudly held up the strip of paper with the message spelled out in dots and dashes. "It won't
     do. That doesn't prove anything," whispered one onlooker. "That's what I call pretty thin," said another. Senator Oliver Smith
     of Indiana, who attended one of Morse's demonstrations, recalled that he "watched his countenance closely, to see if he was
     not deranged . . . and I was assured by other senators after we left the room that they had no confidence in it."
    Morse decided to press ahead all the same with a line from Washington to Baltimore, a distance of about forty miles. The two
     towns were already linked by railway, and he obtained permission to run the telegraph cable alongside the railway. The Baltimore
     & Ohio Railroad Company was more than a little suspicious; it granted permission on the condition that the line could be built
     "without embarrassment to the operations of the company" and, just to cover itself both ways, demanded free use of the telegraph
     if indeed it did turn out to work.
    In the spring of 1844, an observer, John W. Kirk, was appointed by Congress to keep an eye on Morse, who was described as
     "impracticable or crazy" and whose invention was regarded as mere "foolishness." But although he started out as skeptical
     as everyone else, Kirk soon came up with a scheme that would verify whether or not all those dots and dashes actually corresponded
     to useful information. The Whig National Convention was due to take place in Baltimore on May 1, and although the line had
     not been completed by then, it did reach from Washington to within fifteen miles of Baltimore. By successfully transmitting
     the names of the convention's nominees, Morse would be able to prove the usefulness of his invention.
    Once announced, the names of the nominees were duly rushed by train to Vail, who was installed at a temporary platform fifteen
     miles outside Baltimore. Vail then transmitted the list to Morse in Washington,