Samuel F. B. Morse

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Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter of portraits and historic scenes.

Samuel F.B. Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the first child of geographer and pastor Jedidiah Morse and Elizabeth Ann Breese Morse. After attending Phillips Academy as a child, he started attending college at 14. He devoted himself to art and became a pupil of Washington Allston, a well known American painter. While at Yale University, he attended lectures on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day. He earned money by painting portraits. In 1810, he graduated from Yale University. Morse later accompanied Allston to Europe in 1811.

Image:Samuel F B Morse - Project Gutenberg eText 15161.jpg Morse invented a marble-cutting machine that could carve three dimensional sculptures in marble or stone. Morse couldn't patent it, however, because of an existing 1820 Thomas Blanchard design.

Contents

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Middle years


It is disputed whether Morse had invented the electrical telegraph in 1837. Joseph Henry was the first with a prototype, working in what today is Princeton University. Henry also had scientific papers, which Morse could not produce even when he was sued--Morse vs. O'Reilly. During the patent trial, Morse's lawyer claimed that the scientific papers that Morse put in writing with his own hand, were burned in a recent fire. Joseph Henry was the open source promoter of the time and Morse took advantage of the openness and patented the devices in 1837. In 1832, Morse had developed the idea of electromagnetic telegraphy, and a signaling alphabet known as Morse Code in his sketchbook during conversations with Dr. Charles T. Jackson.

When studying in Rome in 1830, he became acquainted with the Danish/Icelandic sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen; the two artists would sometimes take walks at night among the ancient ruins. Morse also painted Thorvaldsen's portrait. In the fall of 1835, Morse built and demonstrated a recording telegraph with a moving paper ribbon. At the beginning of 1836, Morse demonstrated his recording telegraph to Dr. Leonard Gale. Also in 1836, Morse ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York on a Nativist ticket, receiving 1,496 votes.

In 1836, Morse finished his first working prototype of the telegraph. It used a one-element battery and a simple electromagnet. This prototype worked only over short distances of about 40ft or less. In the winter of 1836-1837 Morse showed his prototype to Leonard Gale, professor of chemistry at New York University, where Morse taught painting. Gale was aware of the works of Joseph Henry on electromagnetic relays. Based on this knowledge Gale suggested several improvements and also urged Morse to read Henry's 1831 paper, which described these improvements. With these improvements Morse and Gale were able to record messages through ten miles of wire. In September of the same year, Alfred Vail, then student at New York University, witnessed a demonstration of the telegraph. Vail's father Stephen Vail was a well-connected tinkerer, inventor, lawyer, community leader, and technology investor. He helped to finance the work on the telegraph.

Image:FAA Phonetic and Morse Chart.gif In 1838, Morse changed the telegraphic cipher, from a telegraphic dictionary with number code to a code for each letter. Whether Alfred Vail was the actual inventor of this simpler code has been debated since the earliest days. According to much of the literature on the subject, Vail was indeed the actual inventor, although Morse and his descendants claimed otherwise.

On January 24, Morse demonstrated the telegraph to colleges. On February 8, 1838, Morse first publicly demonstrated the electrical telegraph to a scientific committee at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (The first time it worked was on January 6). On February 21, Morse demonstrated the telegraph to President Martin Van Buren and his cabinet. Shortly afterwards, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Commerce chairman F. O. J. Smith of Maine became a partner with Morse and proposed a bill in Congress, which didn't pass, for a $30,000 telegraph line project. Morse was also an early pioneer of Wireless telegraphy, inventing a means of broadcasting a telegraph signal through a body of water or down steel railroad tracks or anything conductive. It is said that, had he used an antenna with his circuits, he would have invented true Wireless Radio.

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Later years

Image:Samuel Morse.jpg

In 1839, Samuel Morse published (from Paris) the first American description of daguerreotype photography by Louis Daguerre. Morse pioneered American daguerreotypes. On May 24, 1844 Morse sent the telegraph message "What hath God wrought" (a Bible quotation, Numbers 23:23) from the Supreme Court room in Washington, D.C. to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland.

In the 1850s, Morse went to Copenhagen and visited the Thorvaldsen Museum, where the sculptor's grave is in the inner courtyard. He was received by King Frederick VII, and he expressed his wish to donate his portrait from 1830 to the king. The Thorvaldsen portrait today belongs to Margaret II of Denmark.

In the 1860s, Morse became well-known as an active defender of America's institution of slavery, considering it to be divinely sanctioned.

He died in April 1872 at his home at 5 West 22nd Street, New York, New York, at the age of eighty, and was buried in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

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Quotes

  • What hath God wrought?
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See also

American Morse code

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External links

Image:MorseStatue.jpg

General

Court Cases

Stamps

Programs


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Further reading

  • Paul J. Staiti, Samuel F. B. Morse (Cambridge 1989).
  • Lauretta Dimmick, "Mythic Proportion: Bertel Thorvaldsen's Influence in America", Thorvaldsen: l'ambiente, l'influsso, il mito, ed. P. Kragelund and M. Nykjær, Rome 1991 (Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, Supplementum 18.), pp. 169-191.
  • Tom Standage, "The Victorian Internet", pp. 21-40.

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