Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals: In Two Volumes, Volume IIMorse, Samuel Finley Breese
History
Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals: In Two Volumes, Volume II
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, 1791-1872; Telegraph
But now, with increasing wealth, the conditions were changed, and so they
were married, and in their case it can with perfect truth be said, "They
lived happy ever after," and failed by but a year of being able to
celebrate their silver wedding. Soon a young family grew up around him,
to whom he was always a patient and loving father. We his children
undoubtedly gave him many an anxious moment, as children have a habit of
doing, but through all his trials, domestic as well as extraneous, he was
calm, wise, and judicious.
[Illustration: SARAH ELIZABETH GRISWOLD Second wife of S.F.B. Morse]
But now the first of the great lawsuits, which were to confirm Morse's
patent rights or to throw his invention open to the world, was begun,
and, with his young bride, he hastened to Frankfort to be present at the
trial. To follow these suits through all their legal intricacies would
make dry reading and consume reams of paper. Mr. Prime in a footnote
remarks: "Mr. Henry O'Reilly has deposited in the Library of the New York
Historical Society more than one hundred volumes containing a complete
history of telegraphic litigation in the United States. These records are
at all times accessible to any persons who wish to investigate the claims
and rights of individuals or companies. The _testimony_ alone in the
various suits fills several volumes, each as large as this."
It will, therefore, only be necessary to say that almost all of these
suits, including the final one before the Supreme Court of the United
States, were decided in Morse's favor. Every legal device was used
against him; his claims and those of others were sifted to the uttermost,
and then as now expert opinion was found to uphold both sides of the
case. To quote Mr. Prime:
"The decision of the Supreme Court was unanimous on all the points
involving the right of Professor Morse to the claim of being the original
inventor of the Electro-Magnetic Recording Telegraph. A minority of the
court went still further, and gave him the right to the motive power of
magnetism as a means of operating machinery to imprint signals or to
produce sounds for telegraphic purposes. The testimony of experts in
science and art is not introduced because it was thoroughly weighed and
sifted by intelligent and impartial men, whose judgment must be accepted
as final and sufficient. The justice of the decision has never been
impugned. Each succeeding year has confirmed it with accumulating
evidence.
"One point was decided against the Morse patent, and it is worthy of
being noticed that this decision, which denied to Morse the exclusive use
of electromagnetism for recording telegraphs, has never been of injury to
his instrument, because no other inventor has devised an instrument to
supersede his.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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