was struck, and before his ship reached New York
the invention of the telegraph was virtually made, and even the
essential features of the electro-magnetic transmitting and recording
apparatus were sketched on paper. Of necessity, in reaching
this result, Morse made use of the ideas and discoveries of many
other minds. As stated by his biographer:

"Various forms of telegraphic intercourse had been devised before;
electro-magnetism had been studied by _savants_ for many years;
Franklin even had experimented with the transmission of electricity
through great lengths of wire. It was reserved for Morse to combine
the results of many fragmentary and unsuccessful attempts, and put
them, after many years of trial, to a practical use; and though
his claims to the invention have been many times attacked in the
press and in the courts, they have been triumphantly vindicated
alike by the law and the verdict of the people, both at home and
abroad. The Chief Justice of the United States in delivering
the opinion of the Supreme Court in one of the Morse cases, said:
'It can make no difference whether the inventor derived his
information from books or from conversation with men skilled in
the science; and the fact that Morse sought and obtained the
necessary information and counsel from the best sources and
acted upon it, neither impairs his right as an inventor, nor detracts
from his merits.'"

It will be remembered that soon after his first successful experiment,
Morse was harassed by protracted litigation, and that many attempts
were made to deprive him of the just rewards of his great invention.
True, he had been preceded along the same lines by great discoveries.
This fact no man recognized more unreservedly than himself. He
was the inventor, his work, that of gathering up and applying the
marvellous discoveries of others to the practical purposes of human
life. As stated by Mr. Garfield:

"His to interpret to the world that subtle and mysterious element with
which the thinkers of the human race had so long been occupied.
As Franklin had exhibited the relation between lightning and the
electric fluid, so Oersted exhibited the relation between magnetism
and electricity. From 1820 to 1825, his discovery was further
developed by Davy and Sturgeon of England, and Arago and Ampere of
France. The electro-magnetic telegraph is the embodiment, I might
say the incarnation, of many centuries of thought, of many generations
o