It was inevitable that rival claimants for the honor of the invention
should crop up on every side, but, after years of bitter litigation,
Morse succeeded in defending his title, and honors began to pour in upon
him. It is worth remarking that the Sultan of Turkey, supposedly the
most benighted of all rulers, was the first monarch to acknowledge Morse
as a public benefactor. That was in 1848; but the monarchs of Europe
soon followed, and in 1858, a special congress was called by the
Emperor of the French to devise some suitable testimonial to the great
inventor. But perhaps the most fitting testimonial of all were the
ceremonies at the unveiling of the Morse monument in New York City in
1871. Delegates were present from every state in the Union, and at the
close of the reception, William Orton, president of the Western Union
Telegraph Company, announced that the telegraph instrument before the
audience was in connection with every other one of the ten thousand
instruments in America, and that, beside every instrument an operator
was waiting to receive a message. Then a young operator sent this
message from the key: "Greeting and thanks to the telegraph fraternity
throughout the world. Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace,
good-will to men." Then the venerable inventor, the personification of
dignity, simplicity and kindliness, bent above the key, and sent out,
"S. F. B. Morse." A storm of enthusiasm swept over the audience, and the
scene will never be forgotten by any who took part in it. The proudest
boast of many an old operator is that he received that message. Death
came to the inventor a year later, and on the day of his funeral, every
telegraph office throughout the land was draped in mourning.

Although to Morse belongs all the credit for the invention of the
telegraph, it should, in justice to one man, be pointed out that it
would have been impossible but for a discovery which preceded it--that
of the electro-magnet. To Joseph Henry, the great physicist, first of
Princeton, then of the Smithsonian Institution, this invention is
chiefly due. We have already spoken of Professor Henry's work in
science, but none of it was more important than his invention, in 1828,
of the modern form of electro-magnet--a coil of silk-covered wire wound
in a series of crossed layers around a soft iron core, and in 1831, he
had used it to produce the ringing of a bell at a distance. It is this
magnet which forms the basis o