The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-08-23
MORSE ALPHABET AGAIN.
Alfred vaiI's Claims to the Invention
 of the Dot-and-Dash System.

Primarily Prof Morse's experiments in telegraphy had been prosecuted not at Speedwell, Morristown, N. J., but at the university of the city of New York, at which he was professor of painting,s and from which institution Alfred Vail was graduated in June 1887. Alfred Vail returned to the uni versity in September of the same year for the purpose of beginning a course of study preparatory to entering the ministry Shortly after his return Vail became interested in the exhibitions. which Morse was giving of his crude wooden apparatus, with a degree of success which to the mind of Alfred Vail suggested much larger range of effort. The result was contract enter ed into by and between the two men, which was signed September 23, 1S37 By the terms of this contract my father, Alfred Vail covenants to con struct and put into successful opera
 tion, at his own proper cost and ex- pense, one of the telegraphs of the plan and invention of the party of the | first part (Morse) and also agrees to devote his time and personal services faithfully to this object with out charge" his remuneration to be pant ownership in the letters patent, for which he was also to pay.
 l My father and Morse at once went to iMorristown, to which place Morse had i not before been In the home of my grandfather Judge Stephen Vail, Morse was made welcome as a guest, remain- | ing there several months. In gratitude for this courtesy (whlle Alfred Vail was producing the real telegraph-th known as the "dot and dash system" in which Morse had no part whatever), he painted the portraits of my grand rather and grandmother, which I re- gret to state can by no stretch of the Imagination be termed works of art. Alfred Vail found Morses original apparatus (which Is now on exhibition In the national museum at washing ton) absolutely impracticable, although 1t could communicate intelligence. but 1 in so laborious and slow a manner as | to be of little more value than as | toy Morse's efforts to improve this method, involving a vocabulary which had to be translated upon receipt, was futile An entirely new system and mechanism, "the dot and dash" all of which was solely the invention of AL fred Vail with no assistance what ever from Morse, had to be provided.
 Alfred Vail, with a conscientious characteristic of his nature, believed that in producing an absolutely new and di$tinct system of telegraphy of the contract he had entered into with Morse. Concerning his invention. the recording receiver, Vail once wrote: q am the sole and only inventor of this mode of embossed telegraph writing. Prof. Morse did not contribute any, thing to it, nor did any one else, but have not asserted publicly my right as first and sole inventor, because I wished to preserve the peaceful unity of the invention, and because I could not, according to my contract with
 Prof. Morse, have gotten a patent for it."
 The owner and editor of the Sun at tkis time was Moses Y. Beach, a per-
 sonal friend of my father and grand father, and in the Sun of September
 25, 1857, will be found an article writ
 ten by MT. Beach, entitled 'Honor to whom honor is due" in which he wrote; Alfred Vail entered into these departments with his whole soul, and
 to him is Prof Morse indebted, quite as much as to his own wit, for his ul-
 timate triumph. It was Alfred Vail
 who invented the far-famed alphabet,
 and he, too, was the inventor of the
 instrument that bears Morse's name.
 But whatever he did or contrived went
 eheerfully to the great end. Alfred felt
 rewarded In seeing the gradual accom- lplishment of the dream" Any one suf-
 ficiently interested in this subject to
 take the trouble will find in the April,
 1888, issue of the Century Magazine an
 exceedingly interesting sketch of Alfred
 Vail and his work.-Stephen Vail in a ] Letter to the New York Sua