Cornell Alumni News Volume 46, Number 22 May I 5, I 944 Price 20 Cents Ezra Cornell at Age of Twenty-one (See First Page Inside) Class Reunions Will 25e Different This Year! While the War lasts, Bonded Reunions will take the place of the usual class pilgrimages to Ithaca in June. But when the War is won, all Classes will come back to register again in Barton Hall for a mammoth Victory Homecoming and to celebrate Cornell's Seventy-fifth Anniversary. Help Your Class Celebrate Its Bonded Reunion The Plan is Simple—Instead of coming to your Class Reunion in Ithaca this June, use the money your trip would cost to purchase Series F War Savings Bonds in the name of "Cornell University, A Corporation, Ithaca, N. Y." Series F Bonds of $25 denomination cost $18.50 at any bank or post office. The Bonds you send will be credited to your Class in the 1943-44 Alumni Fund, which closes June 30. They will release cash to help Cornell through the difficult war year ahead. By your participation in Bonded Reunions: America's War Effort Is Speeded Cornell's War Effort Is Aided Transportation Loads Are Eased Campus Facilities ^re Saved Your Class Fund Is Increased Cornell's War-to-peace Conversion Your Money Does Double Duty Is Assured Send your Bonded Reunion War Bonds to Cornell Alumni Fund Council, 3 East Avenue, Ithaca, N. Y. Cornell Association of Class Secretaries Please mention the CORNELL ALUMNI NEWS Volume 46, Number 22 May 15, 1944 Price, 20 Cents CORNELL ALUMNI NEWS Subscription price $4 a year. Entered as second class matter, Ithaca, N.Y. Published the first and fifteenth of every month. him to go ahead with construction at Ezra Cornell: Telegraph Pioneer a Portland machine shop. The Cornell plow was drawn by sixteen oxen and cut a narrow furrow, First Message 100 Years Ago twenty inches deep. The telegraph BY JAMES S. KNAPP '31 wire, enclosed in a pipe, was fed through the plow into the trench, a CENTENNIAL of the first success- 100 years ago, which pointed the way very efficient arrangement. Morse ^ ful telegraph message will be for the modern telegraph, telephone, was on hand August 19 to witness the observed May 24 as the foundation of radio, and oceanic cables. These in- first test. Neither Smith nor Morse modern communications. The event clude the "Double or Nothing" pro- could believe that the cable had been holds special interest for Cornellians gram May 19 at 9:30 p.m., Eastern laid after it disappeared from the because of the indispensable part that war time, from Baltimore, and a dra- drum, but a pick and shovel uncov- Ezra Cornell had in the development matization in the "Blue Network ered the wire at a depth of eighteen of this industry and the fact that it Playhouse" May 20 at noon. Life inches, for which the machine had became the source of his fortune that magazine has scheduled a picture been adjusted. This accomplishment made possible the founding of Cornell story of the event. gave both Smith and Morse great University. Leaders of the communications confidence in Cornell's ability as a Ezra Cornell was associated with industry, including Western Union mechanic and practical man, and he Professor Samuel F. B. Morse in the Telegraph Co., American Telephone was persuaded to take charge of laying practical development of the telegraph & Telegraph Co., International Tele- the cable for the experimental line to and was one of those who formed the phone & Telegraph Corp., RCA Washington. Western Union Telegraph Co. The Communications, Inc., Press Wire- Troubles Arise University owns the original Morse less, Inc., Tropical Radio Telegraph telegraph instrument, presented by Co., and the Association of American Cornell arrived in Baltimore, Octo- Hiram W. Sibley, and has loaned it Railroads, are uniting to give a dinner ber 17, 1843, and work was begun for a re-enactment of the sending of in Washington the evening of May 24, promptly, with eight mules in harness. the original message, "What Hath which President Edmund E. Day will The machine worked well, and it God Wrought!" from Washington, attend. Tribute will be paid to Morse was possible to lay from a half-mile DC., to Baltimore, Md., May 24, and his early associates, of whom to a mile a day. Cornell was respon- 1844. Ezra Cornell wafe one of the most sible only for laying the cable; join- important. ing the ends and testing for electrical National Observance leakage were in charge of a mechanical Some say that without Ezra Cor- The occasion will have national assistant. nell, there would have been no tele- Everything went well until the significance. A commemorative stamp graph 100 years ago. Certain it is that will be issued by the Post Office De- underground line reached a point nine without his inventive- genius a message miles from Baltimore, when it was partment, a plaque in memory of could not then have been transmitted Morse will be unveiled in the old discovered that the insulation was for any considerable distance over defective and the line would not work Supreme Court Room in the Capitol, wire. and the Liberty Ship, "Samuel F. B. underground. Cornell had been suspi- Morse/' will be christened in Balti- Founder Laid Cables cious before this that the method of more, Just what did Mr. Cornell do? Let testing for electrical leakage was The ceremony at the Capitol is in us go back a century and more to the hands of a joint committee of the July, 1843. Cornell, then thirty-six Cover picture is of Ezra Cornell at the House and Senate, headed by Senator years old, paid a visit to the Hon. age of twenty-one. In April, 1828, three Burton K. Wheeler. At the unveiling F. O. J. Smith, editor of The Maine months after his twenty-first birthday, he of the plaque, the scene of 100 years Farmer, to find Smith kneeling beside shouldered his box of carpenter's tools and walked the forty miles from his home near ago will be re-enacted with the Cornell the moldboard of a plow on his office DeRuyter to seek his fortune in the instrument, when Morse sent his floor. He jumped up: "Cornell, you thriving port of Ithaca. Soon he became a message to Baltimore over an experi- are just the man I wanted to see." millwright in the textile mill on the site of mental telegraph line built with Congress had appropriated $30,000 Cascadilla Hall, and a year later went to funds appropriated by Congress. The for a test of Morse's invention, the the flouring and plaster mills of Colonel exercises in the old Supreme Court electric telegraph, and Smith had Jeremiah Beebe at the foot of Fall Creek. Room and reception of the historic gotten the contract to lay the lead Fifteen years after he came to Ithaca, message at the Mt. Clare station of cable, enclosing four wires, two feet Cornell's connection with the telegraph the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in underground, for $100 a mile. Smith began, which was to make him wealthy and make possible his founding of Cornell Baltimore are expected to be broad- thought he needed two machines, one University. cast on national radio hook-ups at to dig a trench, the other to backfill. This account of the Founder's early noon, May 24, and filmed by the Cornell pondered, examined a sample contribution to the communications in- news-reels. Before the event, several of cable, and said he thought the dustry is by the acting University Director radio programs will be devoted to this work could be done with one machine. of Public Information. first great electrical achievement of He made a pencil sketch. Smith told faulty, but the second mechanical science. Books he sought at the Patent In his book, The Telegraph in assistant would not report it. One Office Library were found to be miss- America, (1887) James D. Reid says night after midnight, however, they ing, obviously to prevent his using Cornell's proposal was simply two did make a test, which confirmed his them. He took his case to Smith, and plates of glass, between which the suspicions. was introduced to the Librarian of wires, wrapped in cloth saturated with Congress. His book problem was gum shellac, were placed. Over this Gets Federal Appointment solved, and he studied industriously. a wooden cover was nailed to protect This presented a serious problem. He learned that in England, similar it from rain and to press the glass To admit to the watching public that experiments had failed and they had upon the wire and keep it in place. a mistake had been made would strung wires on poles with insulating These were afterward removed and probably have resulted in abandon- supports. Soon after, Morse told the bureau knob pattern substituted. ment of the project. Morse asked Cornell he might change his plans. Cornell to contrive to stop the work Cornell continued the work of remov- Cornell's Genius Important for a few days. The latter steered his ing wires from cable, but delayed In reality, this was a tremendous plow against a rock and wrecked it reinsulation, forseeing that it would development, for without proper in- beyond repair, providing apparent be unnecessary. sulation the overhead lines could not justification for stopping work on the have carried the electrical impulses underground line. Invents Pole Insulator and failure would have resulted as When it was agreed that the under- Then Cornell was directed to ar- with the underground system.