e
work of preparing magnets, winding wire, constructing batteries, etc., in
the University for an experiment on a larger, but still very limited
scale, in the little leisure that each had to spare, and being at the
same time much cramped for funds....

"The latter part of August, 1887, the operation of the instruments was
shown to numerous visitors at the University....

"On Saturday, the 2d of September, 1837, Professor Daubeny, of the
English Oxford University, being on a visit to this country, was invited
with a few friends to see the operation of the telegraph, in its then
rude form, in the cabinet of the New York University, where it had then
been put up with a circuit of seventeen hundred feet of copper wire
stretched back and forth in that long room. Professor Daubeny, Professor
Torrey, and Mr. Alfred Vail were present among others. This exhibition of
the telegraph, although of very rude and imperfectly constructed
machinery, demonstrated to all present the practicability of the
invention, and it resulted in enlisting the means, the skill, and the
zeal of Mr. Alfred Vail, who, early the next week, called at the rooms
and had a more perfect explanation from Professor Morse of the character
of the invention."

It was Professor Gale who first called Morse's attention to the
discoveries of Professor Joseph Henry, especially to that of the
intensity magnet, and he thus describes the interesting event:--

"Morse's machine was complete in all its parts and operated perfectly
through a circuit of some forty feet, but there was not sufficient force
to send messages to a distance. At this time I was a lecturer on
chemistry, and from necessity was acquainted with all kinds of galvanic
batteries, and knew that a battery of one or a few cups generates a large
quantity of electricity capable of producing heat, etc., but not of
projecting electricity to a great distance, and that, to accomplish this,
a battery of many cups is necessary. It was, therefore, evident to me
that the one large cup-battery of Morse should be made into ten or
fifteen smaller ones to make it a battery of intensity so as to project
the electric fluid.... Accordingly I substituted the battery of many cups
for the battery of one cup. The remaining defect in the Morse machine, as
first seen by me, was that the coil of wire around the poles of the
electro-magnet consisted of but a few turns only, while, to give the
greatest projectile power, the number o