y. Others, in the latter part of the eighteenth century
and the earlier years of the nineteenth, devised similar arrangements.
But no strictly electromagnetic apparatus for telegraphic signalling was
put to successful use until 1836, when, in England, Charles Wheatstone,
who is commonly regarded as the first inventor of practical electric
telegraphy, constructed an apparatus whereby thirty signals were
transmitted through nearly four miles of wire. From 1837 to 1843 he had
as an associate William Fothergill Cooke, and the two worked together to
develop the electric telegraph. They afterward quarrelled over their
respective claims to credit, but in 1838-1841 telegraph lines secured by
their patents were set up on the Great Western and two other English
railways.

Meanwhile other inventors were still working for the same results, in
many parts of the world, and it has been significantly said that "the
electric telegraph had, properly speaking, no inventor; it grew up
little by little." Nevertheless with respect to the distinctive
character of Morse's improvements, and his title to a peculiar place
among those through whose labors the electric telegraph "grew," there
can be no question.

Alonzo B. Cornell, son of the founder of Cornell University, at one time
Governor of New York, was intimately connected with electrical and
telegraphic affairs for many years; therefore on the subject here
presented he speaks with professional authority. His father was the
first builder of the Morse telegraphs.

* * * * *

During the early years of the nineteenth century but slight advance was
made in the development of electrical science, although there were many
persons both here and abroad engaged in experimental work, and there was
considerable increase of literature bearing upon the subject. It was
reserved for another illustrious American to accomplish the next
important and decisive step in the pathway of progress. In 1828 Joseph
Henry, then professor of physics at the Albany Academy, afterward a
professor at Princeton, and subsequently for many years secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution at Washington, made the highly important
discovery that by winding a plain iron core with many layers of
insulated wire, through which the electric current was passed, he could
at pleasure charge and discharge the iron core with magnetic power. Thus
Henry produced the electromagnet which was the beginning of th