Samuel Morse
- the inventor of the Morse Telegraph System
In many respects Samuel Morse was a most unlikely person to become a leading
technology inventor, developing the Morse Code, Morse Keys and the Morse
telegraph system, a new communications system that would revolutionise the
world. It has been said that it was the "Internet" of the Victorian age. Later
further developments were made in the form of the telephone, allowing voice
communications over wires. Although the name of Morse is well known for his
Morse code, comparatively few people realise he was one of the best artists to
come from the North American continent.
Boyhood
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born on April 27th 1791 in Charlestown (now
Charleston) Massachusetts. His father Jedidiah Morse who was an American
Congregational minister and an eminent geographer, author on the first American
textbook on geography entitled Geography Made Easy (1784).
His parents sent the young Morse to start his education at Phillips Academy
in Andover (USA). He proved to be a rather poor and slightly eccentric scholar,
but despite this he was moved to Yale College a few years later. Here his two
main interests started to grow. The first was associated with the new science of
electricity and the second was painting, especially small portraits.
Foreign Travel
Morse graduated from Yale in 1810 and became a clerk for a book publisher in
Boston Massachusetts. However he found the job uninteresting and he longed to
become a painter. So a year later with help from his parents he set out for
England to study the traditional style of painting followed there. Four years
later in 1815 he returned to America and to his dismay he found that the style
of art he had studied was not appreciated. Accordingly he took up portrait
painting and became an itinerant artist.
In 1818 when Morse was 27 he married Lucretia Pickering Walker, a young lady
from Concord New Hampshire who was just 19 years of age. They were blessed with
three children and it is obvious from his writings and reports that he loved
her, but Morse needed to earn money to support his family and this took him away
from home. During this period he had some notable successes but also some
failures as well. In 1822 he completed work on a painting of the House of
Representatives in session. This work included small portraits of over 80
members of the house. He had planned to charge an admission fee to see the
picture, but the response was so poor that he abandoned the idea. However he did
paint a portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette, A French man and a hero of the
American War of Independence. This is judged to amongst his finest works.
Life started to improve for Morse as his reputation improved. However whilst
he was away on business in Washington he received news that his wife died whist
she was convalescing from an illness. He now had to face life supporting and
looking after three children, but despite these additional responsibilities he
devoted himself to his work and achieved considerable success.
Morse also lead an active social life. He was described as a natural leader
and mixed with intellectuals and those in high office. In 1826 along with thirty
other American artists he founded the national Academy of Design and he was
elected president, a post he held until 1845. He also took an active interest in
politics.
An Idea Dawns
Morse decided to travel to Europe to study more about the styles used there. He
spent three years visiting France, Italy and Switzerland to look at the forms of
art practised there. At this time the electromagnet had just been discovered and
a number of elementary forms of telegraph systems had also been proposed. Morse
who had retained his interest in electricity heard about the electromagnet and
he started thinking about how this new invention could be used. It was during
his trip home an idea for a practicable telegraph system started to develop.
As Morse was very busy with his painting as well as lecturing because he was
now appointed professor of painting and sculpture at the University of the City
of New York (now New York University). As a result he did not devote much time
to his idea for a telegraph. It was not for about three years that he was able
to develop a prototype. However once he had done this his enthusiasm for the
idea grew and in 1837 he gave over all his time to it putting his painting and
lecturing to one side.
Unfortunately he did not have all the resources to build the complete system
himself and so enlisted the help of a number of friends to get the system off
the ground. One named Alfred Vail was gifted with mechanical ideas and many
people believe that he actually invented the Morse key. Progress was swift at
first and within a year they had developed a system of dots and dashes to
represent the letters and numbers. In fact this original code has many
similarities to the one used today and it was used for several years before the
need arose for it to be changed.
The partners realised that they had to interest the large organisations and
government institutions if their idea was to succeed. They gave demonstrations
to the American Congress and several other organisations in America but without
success. Undeterred by this they even came to England where they hoped for a
different response but without success.
Morse was not easily stopped. Having failed to secure any interest with the
help of his partners he set out on his own and this time he was successful. He
managed to gain the support of Congress and received a grant of $30 000 to set
up an experimental line between Baltimore and Washington, a distance of about 40
miles. Despite a number of major setbacks it took less than a year to complete
and on the 28th May 1844 he sent the famous first message which read "What hath
God wrought?"
With this system operating interest grew very fast. Many of the railroad
companies saw the possibilities of the new system and they started to have
systems installed. In fact after only four years more than 5000 miles of line
had been installed to take the new telegraph system. In addition to this orders
soon started to come in from Europe as they heard about the system and how it
performed. With all of these orders Morse became very wealthy.
Along with this success came trouble. His former partners filed law suits
against him as they felt they had contributed to the system. This legal battle
took many years to settle and cost a great deal of money, but eventually Morse
won and was able to hold onto all his ideas.
A Camelback key dating from approximately 1860.
This key gained its name from the fact that it had a "hump" in its back. The key
also has a sounder on the same base making it what was often termed a KOB or Key
On Base
Locust Grove
As a result of his increasing wealth, Morse was able to buy a country home which
he named Locust Grove. The 100 acre site was magnificent and overlooked the
Hudson River near Poughkeepsie in New York State. A few years after he bought
the house, in the early 1850s he commissioned the architect Alexander Davis to
rebuild the house in the popular Italian style. It contained 24 rooms and gave
him sufficient room for his family as well as a library to hold his extensive
book collection as well as other mementoes he had acquired during his life.
Second marriage
In 1848 as his telegraph system was expanding very rapidly Morse married for a
second time. There had been a number of rumours of romantic associations,
although nothing came of them until at a family wedding he met a second cousin
named Sarah. He was particularly struck by the way she responded to one of his
son's who had learning difficulties. Sarah, herself was born with poor hearing
and had a speech defect. The relationship grew quickly and they were soon
married.
There was some family disapproval of the marriage. Sarah was less than half
his age and some thought she might have married Morse for his wealth. Sarah
strongly denied this saying that if Morse lost all his wealth she would support
him herself. As proof of the strength of their relationship, this period proved
to be the happiest in his life.
The New Code
Although the original code that Morse had derived served its purpose well it had
several limitations. Some letters had pauses in them, others had dashes that
were longer than others, and there was no provision for accents required by some
European languages. These problems meant that the code was not always easy to
use. As a result of this a new code was devised and introduced in 1851. It bore
many similarities to the old one but it was much easier to send having no spaces
in the letters themselves and standard lengths for all the dots and dashes. In
fact this code is called the International Morse Code and it is the one that is
used today.
Later Years
In his later life Morse was generous with his money. He supported many
organisations from the religious to the educational. He also supported many
itinerant artists because he remembered his years on the road during his younger
years.
Morse also received the rare honour of having his statue erected during his
own lifetime. In recognition of his great achievements a statue was unveiled on
10th June 1871. Many famous people attended including Theodore Roosevelt Sr.
Even today it can be seen in New York's Central Park. Later that evening Morse
there was a ceremony at the Academy of Music at which he was the guest of honour.
Morse died at the age of 81 in New York City on 2nd April 1872. He died
peacefully after an illness of about two weeks in a home he and Sarah maintained
in New York itself as their winter house.
Few people can have achieved so much especially in such diverse fields. He
said that he wanted to be remembered chiefly for his invention of the telegraph
system, but with the introduction of new and computerised forms of communication
the use of the Morse code is decreasing. Conversely interest in his portraits is
increasing and he will be remembered for many years to come as an artist. Even
so the Morse telegraph system and the Morse code have played such a central part
in the communications revolution that it will take many years for his name to be
dimmed.
After his death the ownership of Locust Grove passed to the Young family. It
stayed with this family until the death of Miss Annette Young who bequeathed the
house and 20 acres of ground to the people of New York State. In 1963 it was
designated a National Historic Site by the U.S. Department of the Interior and
displays the life and work of Samuel Morse. For those wanting to visit, it is
located two miles south of Poughkeepsie on U.S. Route 9.
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