The question of the appropriation was referred to the Committee on Commerce, who reported favorably, and Morse then returned to New York to prepare to go abroad, as it was necessary for his rights that his invention should be patented in European countries before publication in the United States.
Morse sailed in May, 1838, and returned to New York by the steamship Great Western in April, 1839.

His journey had not been very successful.
He had found London in the excitement of the ceremonies of the coronation of Queen Victoria, and the British Attorney-General had refused him a patent on the ground that American newspapers had published his invention, making it public property.

In France he had done better.

But the most interesting result of the journey was something not related to the telegraph at all.

In Paris he had met Daguerre, the celebrated Frenchman who had discovered a process of making pictures by sunlight, and Daguerre had given Morse the secret.
This led to the first pictures taken by sunlight in the United States and to the first photographs of the human face taken anywhere.