The italics are mine, for it has over and over been claimed for everybody
who had a part in the early history of the telegraph, either by hint,
help, or discovery, that more credit should be given to him than to Morse
himself--to Henry, to Gale, to Vail, to Doctor Page, and even to F.O.J.
Smith. In fact Morse used often to say that some people thought he had no
right to claim his invention because he had not discovered electricity,
nor the copper from which his wires were made, nor the brass of his
instruments, nor the glass of his insulators.

I shall make one other quotation from the opinion of Judge Kane and Judge
Grier at one of the earlier trials, in Philadelphia, in 1851:--

"That he, Mr. Morse, was the first to devise and practise the art of
recording language, at telegraphic distances, by the dynamic force of the
electro-magnet, or, indeed, by any agency whatever, is, to our minds,
plain upon all the evidence. It is unnecessary to review the testimony
for the purpose of showing this. His application for a patent, in April,
1838, was preceded by a series of experiments, results, illustrations and
proofs of final success, which leave no doubt whatever but that his great
invention was consummated before the early spring of 1837. There is no
one person, whose invention has been spoken of by any witness, or
referred to in any book as involving the principle of Mr. Morse's
discovery, but must yield precedence of date to this. Neither Steinheil,
nor Cooke and Wheatstone, nor Davy, nor Dyar, nor Henry, had at this time
made a recording telegraph of any sort. The devices then known were
merely _semaphores_, that spoke to the eye for a moment--bearing about
the same relation to the great discovery before us as the Abbé Sicard's
invention of a visual alphabet for the purposes of conversation bore to
the art of printing with movable types. Mr. Dyar's had no recording