During the twelve years that followed Morse was engaged in a painful struggle to perfect his invention and secure for it a proper presentation to the public. The refusal of the Government to commission him to paint one of the great historical pictures in the rotunda of the Capitol, seemed to destroy all his old artistic ambition. In poverty he pursued his new enterprise, making his own models, moulds, and castings, denying himself the common necessaries of life, and encountering embarrassments and delays of the most disheartening kind. It was not until 1836 that he completed any apparatus that would work, his original idea having been supplemented by his discovery, in 1835, of the "relay," by means of which the electric current might be reinforced or renewed where it became weak through distance from its source. Finally, on September 2, 1837, the instrument was exhibited to a few friends at his room in the University building, New York, where a circuit of 1,700 feet of copper wire had been set up, with such satisfactory results as to awaken the practical interest of the Messrs. Vail, iron and brass workers in New Jersey, who thenceforth became associated with Morse in his undertaking. Morse's petition for a patent was dated September 28, 1837, and was soon followed by a petition to Congress for an appropriation to defray the expense of subjecting the telegraph to actual experiment over a length sufficient to establish its feasibility and demonstrate its value. The Committee on Commerce, to whom the petition was referred, reported favorably. Congress, however, adjourned without making the appropriation, and meanwhile Morse sailed for Europe to take out patents there. The trip was not a success. In England his application was refused, on the alleged ground that his invention had been already published; and while he obtained a patent in France, it was subsequently appropriated by the French Government without compensation to himself. His negotiations also with Russia proved futile, and after a year's absence he returned to New York. On February 23, 1843, Congress passed the long-delayed appropriation of $30,000; and steps were at once taken to construct a telegraph from Baltimore to Washington. On May 24, 1844, it was used for the first time, Mr. Morse himself sending over the wires the first and ever-to-be-remembered message, "What hath God wrought." [Illustration: Samuel F. B. Morse, Inventor of the Telegraph.]