Identifier: americanencyclop00blak (find matches)
Title: The American encyclopedia of history, biography and travel
Year: 1857 (1850s)
Authors: (Blake, William O.) (from old catalog)
Subjects: World history Biography
Publisher: Columbus, Published by J. & H. Miller
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ed for pencils, andafter a trial of various means for obtaining the end desired, and findingby experiment he could obtain any requisite force from the lever, headopted the stylus or steel point for indenting the paper, and it is this hehas since used. After great difficulty and much discouragement, Profes-sor Morse in 1835 demonstrated the practicability of his invention bycompleting and putting in operation in the New York university, a modelof his Recording Electric Telegraph—the whole apparatus, with theexception of a wooden clock which formed part of it, having been madeby himself. In 1837, he abandoned his profession, with great regret,hoping to make his invention a means of resuming it, under easier andmore agreeable circumstances. In the same year, he filed his caveat atthe patent-office in Washington ; and it is somewhat singular that, duringthis year (1837), Wheatstone, in England, and Steinheil, in Bavaria,both invented a magnetic telegraph, differing from the American and
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DAGUERRE. BIOGRAPHICAL DEPARTMENT. 747 from each other. Wheatstones is very inferior, not being a recordingtelegraph, but requiring to be watched by one of the attendants — thealphabet being made by the deflection of the needle. Steinheils, on thecontrary, is a recording telegraph, but from its complicated and delicatemachinery, has been found impracticable for extended lines. At a con-vention held in 1851 by Austria, Prussia, Saxony, Wurtemberg, andBavaria, for the purpose of adopting a uniform system of telegraphingfor all Germany, by the advice of Steinheil, Professor Morses was theone selected. From the sultan of Turkey he received the first foreignacknowledgment of his invention in the bestowal of a nishan, or order —the order of glory: a diploma to that effect was transmitted to him withthe magnificent decoration of that order in diamonds. The second ac-knowledgment was from the king of Prussia, being a splendid gold snuff-box, containing in its lid the Prussian gold medal o

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