solved, Morse going
backwards and forwards between New York and Morristown. That both Gale
and Vail suggested improvements which were adopted by Morse, can be taken
for granted, but, as I have said before, to modify or elaborate something
originated by another is a comparatively easy matter, and the basic idea,
first conceived by Morse on the Sully, was retained throughout.

All the details of these experiments have not been recorded, but I
believe that at first an attempt was made to put into a more finished
form the principle of the machine made by Morse, with its swinging
pendulum tracing a waving line, but this was soon abandoned in favor of
an instrument using the up-and-down motion of a lever, as drawn in the
1832 sketch-book. In other words, it was a return to first principles as
thought out by Morse, and not, as some would have us believe, something
entirely new suggested and invented independently by Vail.

It was rather unfortunate and curious, in view of Morse's love of
simplicity, that he at first insisted on using the dots and dashes to
indicate numbers only, the numbers to correspond to words in a specially
prepared dictionary. His arguments in favor of this plan were specious,
but the event has proved that his reasoning was faulty. His first idea
was that the telegraph should belong to the Government; that intelligence
sent should be secret by means of a kind of cipher; that it would take
less time to send a number than each letter of each word, especially in
the case of the longer words; and, finally, that although the labor in
preparing a dictionary of all the most important words in the language
and giving to each its number would be great, once done it would be done
for all time.

I say that this was unfortunate because the fact that the telegraphic
alphabet of dots and dashes was not used until after his association with
Vail has lent strength to the claims on the part of Vail's family and
friends that he was the inventor of it and not Morse. This claim has been
so insistently, and even bitterly, made, especially after Morse's death,
that it gained wide credence and has even been incorporated in some
encyclopedias and histories. Fortunately it can be easily disproved, and
I am desirous of finally settling this vexed question because I consider
the conception of this simplest of all conventional alphabets one of the
grandest of Morse's inventions, and one which has conferred great good
upon mankind