When the workshop was rebuilt this room was preserved
as a memorial of the telegraph, for it was here that the true Morse
instrument, such as we know it, was constructed.
It must be remembered that in those days almost everything they
wanted had either to be made by themselves or appropriated to their
purpose. Their first battery was set up in a box of cherry-wood, parted
into cells, and lined with bees-wax; their insulated wire was that used
by milliners for giving outline to the 'sky-scraper' bonnets of that
day. The first machine made at Speedwell was a copy of that devised by
Morse, but as Vail grew more intimate with the subject his own ingenuity
came into play, and he soon improved on the original. The pencil was
discarded for a fountain pen, and the zig-zag signals for the short and
long lines now termed 'dots ' and 'dashes.'
This important alteration led him to the 'Morse alphabet,' or code of
signals, by which a letter is transmitted as a group of short and long
jets, indicated as 'dots' and 'dashes' on the paper. Thus the letter E,
which is so common in English words, is now transmitted by a short jet
which makes a dot; T, another common letter, by a long jet, making a
dash; and Q, a rare letter, by the group dash, dash, dot, dash.
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