practicability as well as the practicality of telegraphing through our
proposed Atlantic cable.... I am most happy to inform you that, as a
crowning result of a long series of experimental investigation and
inductive reasoning upon this subject, the experiments under the
direction of Dr. Whitehouse and Mr. Bright which I witnessed this
morning--in which the induction-coils and receiving-magnets, as modified
by these gentlemen, were made to actuate one of my recording instruments
--have most satisfactorily resolved all doubts of the practicability as
well as practicality of operating the Telegraph from Newfoundland to
Ireland."

In 1838, Morse had been curtly and almost insultingly refused a patent
for his invention in England, a humiliation for which he never quite
forgave the English. Now, eighteen years after this mortifying
experience, the most eminent scientists of this same England vied with
each other in doing him honor. Thus was his scientific fame vindicated,
but, let it be remarked parenthetically, this kind of honor was all that
he ever received from the land of his ancestors. While other nations of
Europe united, two years later, in granting him a pecuniary gratuity, and
while some of their sovereigns bestowed upon him decorations or medals,
England did neither. However, it was always a source of the keenest
gratification that two of those who had invented rival telegraphs proved
themselves broad-minded and liberal enough to acknowledge the superiority
of his system, and to urge its adoption by their respective Governments.
The first of these was Dr. Steinheil, of Munich, to whom I have already
referred, and to whom is due the valuable discovery that the earth can be
used as a return circuit. The second was the Englishman, W.F. Cooke, who,
with Wheatstone, devised the needle telegraph.

On October 9, a banquet was tendered to Morse by the telegraph companies