Alfred Vail

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Alfred Vail

Alfred Lewis Vail (born September 25, 1807 in Morristown (New Jersey) , † January 18, 1859 ibid) was an American engineer and inventor. His parents were Bethiah Youngs (1778 to 1847) and Stephen Vail (1780 to 1864).

Life

After attending public schools, Alfred Vail was trained as a skilled mechanic at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey, a thriving ironworks his father bought in 1829.

In 1832, however, he entered New York City University (now New York University) as a theology student and graduated in 1836. He wanted to be a Presbyterian pastor. On September 2, 1837, while still at university, he witnessed the first telegraph experiment presented by Professor Samuel FB Morse . Since then he has been very interested in this project. Morse was Professor of Art and Design at New York University at the time . However, the apparatus was not operational because the transmission system was missing.

Working with Morse

As early as September 23, 1837 he had formed a partnership with Morse, which obliged him to build a number of telegraph instruments at his own expense and to file patents for them. In return, Morse guaranteed Vail a quarter of the revenue from patents in the United States and half of those abroad.

This partnership with Vail was a great stroke of luck for Morse, as Vail brought along his mechanical know-how, practical inventiveness and the financial resources of his father.

With financial support from his father, Vail began working on a telegraph at the Speedwell Iron Works factory, with William Baxter helping him. When Morse's wooden model was converted to metal, Vail immediately made various improvements. It's hard to understand nowadays the difficulties they faced. So they constructed their first battery from cherry wood in eight compartments, which were held together with beeswax to avoid the reaction of the acid. Not only the shaping of the zinc and copper elements, but also every detail required a series of experiments. Conductive wire was not known on the market and so the first tangible substitute had to be used: a wire from a hatter who kept the large hats of those days in shape. It was copper wire and a good conductor, but the cotton insulation wasn't perfect.

Although Stephen Vail had invited Morse to stay with them until the project was finished, Morse was a rare guest. Communication was by mail, unless Alfred went to New York. But at the end of October, when Morse finally got to Speedwell, he stayed longer than planned: because of a bad cold.

Alfred's parents commissioned Morse to make their portraits in order to tactfully support him. Morse was so distressed financially that Alfred or his father gave him the price for the carriage ride to Speedwell.

The code used at that time only comprised the ten digits; the transmitted numbers had to be translated into letters and words using a table. Alfred Lewis Vail developed the first code from 1838, which also included letters. It consisted of characters of three different lengths and pauses of different lengths. This code was used operationally from 1844 (as the Morse Landline Code or American Morse Code on American railways and telegraph companies until the 1960s). The pauses of different lengths represented an inadequacy of the code, so that Friedrich Clemens Gerke adapted it to the German alphabet in 1848 for the commissioning of the electromagnetic telegraph connection between Hamburg and Cuxhaven. After a few other small changes, Gerkes Code was standardized at the International Telegraph Congress in Paris in 1865 and later standardized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) with the introduction of wireless telegraphy as the International Morse Code. In America, the Morse code was retained, so that there is the “continental code” in addition to the US code.

On January 6, 1838, the first successful attempt at equipping three miles of wire running around the Speedwell workshops was made. The message read: "A patient who waits is not a loser."

An electromagnetic telegraph is a remotely operated electromagnet. In the original Morse code, a Morse code key closed a circuit. The distant receiver was an electromagnetically operated pen that recorded the incoming electrical surges on a moving strip of paper. Morse code consists of a sequence of bars (long tone) and dots (short tone) that are combined to form a word.

Within the next two months, successful demonstrations of the invention were held in New York City, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and in front of Congress in Washington, as well as President Martin van Buren and his cabinet. In the chair of the trade committee, Morse and Vail gained another supporter, Congressman Frances OJ Smith , who Morse offered to participate, and Vail's stake was reduced to one-eighth of the subsequent income. Morse had realized he needed a sponsor familiar with the Washington intrigues - and another source of cash. Vail and Gale agreed for the same reasons. Smith was supposed to provide legal assistance and finance a three-month trip to Europe for Morse and himself to acquire patent rights in Europe. They signed a corresponding agreement on March 2, 1838.

While awaiting approval, Vail worked for the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia from 1838 to 1843 , in which his brother George was involved (Baldwin, Vail and Hufty). It was Alfred's first full-time paid job. George complained about the collaboration with his partner Matthew Baldwin and despite good persuasion from Alfred, he terminated the partnership - much to his detriment, because the locomotive works soon became very successful.

In 1843, as the country began to recover economically, Morse again applied to Congress for $ 30,000 for a trial telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore. The House of Representatives finally agreed, and so did the Senate at its last session. With President John Tyler's signature , Morse received the cash he needed and began plans for an underground telegraph line.

Alfred Vail was back on Morse's staff. Smith had been able to win the collaboration of Ezra Cornell , who constructed a machine that dug a trench for the cable to be laid in lead pipes. Morse had looked at them and agreed to their use. He immediately won Cornell as an employee with $ 1,000 p. a. Cornell soon discovered that the insulation on the wires was defective. FOJ Smith had procured the damaged wire. Morse ordered the work to be stopped immediately. Cornell again built a machine that pulled the wire out of the pipes and re-insulated it. Cornell spent the winter in Washington reading books on electricity and magnetism in the Patent Office and Library of Congress. His reading convinced him that the underground installation was useless and that the wires should be attached to posts above ground with glass insulators. Morse agreed.

On May 24th, 1844, the first and now world-famous despatch was sent over these telegraph masts: “ What hath God wrought? "Samuel Morse was sitting in the Capitol in Washington, DC, and sent this message to the B&O Railroad Depot in Baltimore, Maryland, where Alfred Vail confirmed receipt.

However, the Morse telegraph was built by his colleague Alfred Vail. The first American Morse alphabet also comes from Vail.

The success

In his 1845 book The American Electric Telegraph , Vail describes in the introduction how the telegraph was used a year after the first telegraph line was opened, namely for communications from merchants, members of Congress and the government, banks, stockbrokers, police officers, news, election results , Obituaries, inquiries about the health of relatives, the daily minutes of the Senate and House of Representatives, ordering goods, inquiries about ship departures, minutes of the various courts, summons of witnesses, invitations, receipt of money - in short: everything that has been sent by letter to date had done.

On page 47, Vail also describes a code that could be generated by transposing the 27 letters into 676 codes. The sender and recipient had to agree on which day which code was valid. This was important for business people who wanted to encrypt their transactions.

family

Alfred Vail married Jane Elizabeth Cummings (1817-1852) on July 23, 1839. They had three sons: Stephen (1840-1909), James Cummings (1843-1917) and George Rochester (1852-1931). After Elizabeth Vail's death, Alfred married Amanda O. Eno.

He retired with his family to Morristown, New Jersey, in 1848, where he spent the remaining ten years of his life researching family genealogy. Alfred Vail died on January 18, 1859. His son Stephen donated the original telegraph that his father had created in 1838 to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The Smithsonian also holds Alfred Vail's papers in its collections.

Lack of recognition

Alfred once described his feelings: “I'm not looking for celebrity, I don't care much about the applause of the world ... But what I want is the truth in the context of the story of the improvements in the magnetic telegraph ... as it is equivalent to that The risk I took, the interest I showed and the improvements I made in the company. "

In June 1871, Morse was invited to the New York Academy of Music in connection with the unveiling of his statue in Central Park. He borrowed the recorder from Amanda Vail, which Alfred had invented, from Amanda Vail and placed it on the stage next to him. But he didn't mention it. According to The Presbytarian , all he had to say about Alfred and the Telegraph was, “I found a friend - a capable friend - in Mr. Alfred Vail of New Jersey who, with his father and brother, provided the means to raise the child to give a decent dress before visiting the seat of government. "

A highly angry Amanda decided to save Alfred's reputation. She had promised Morse that she would not show Alfred's papers to anyone but him, believing, as Alfred had believed, that one day he would write the true story of the telegraph. But that afternoon she vowed to give Alfred's story to people who were more trustworthy. Things didn't get any easier when the Morse family wrote a biography with Dr. Samuel Iraneous Prime from the Observer : Alfred was ignored. Morse's youngest son, Edward Lind Morse, issued his letters and he never missed an opportunity to belittle Vail's merits.

So it was finally Alfred's son J. Cummings Vail who edited the book: Early history of the electro-magnetic telegraph from letters and journals of Alfred Vail , in order to pay tribute to his father.

The most important building in Morristown is the Speedwell factory, where Alfred Vail and Samuel FB Morse invented the electromagnetic telegraph. Because of the importance of the event, the factory was added to the National Historic Landmark (NHL) list in 1975 and the building was restored.

gallery

  • The morse key - the transmitter.

  • The receiving device with the electromagnets, the relay and the roll of paper strips

  • The characters that were pressed into the paper with the pen

  • The original receiver in Baltimore 1844

Publications

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wording of the contract dated September 23 between Morse and Vail . Vail was 30 and Morse was 46 years old.
  2. ^ Morristown and Technology ( Memento of March 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Invention of the Telegraph ( Memento from November 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Francis OJ Smith
  5. ↑ The Samuel FB Morse Papers at the Library of Congress , Bound volume 10 June-21 October 1844 (Series: General Correspondence and Related Documents): Drawing of the telegraph posts ( Memento of October 6, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Historic Speedwell: The most important building at Speedwell is the Factory ( Memento from November 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Vail, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vail, Alfred Lewis (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American engineer and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH Morristown, New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 1859
Place of death Morristown, New Jersey