(1791-1872)
[Illustration: Samuel F. B. Morse.]
Samuel Finley Breese Morse, artist and inventor, was born at the
foot of Breed's Hill, Charlestown, Mass., on April 27, 1791. His
father was the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., the author of Morse's
"Geography." At the age of fourteen Samuel Morse entered Yale
College; under the instruction of Professors Day and Silliman he
received the first impulse toward those electrical studies with
which his name is mainly identified.
In 1811 Morse, whose tastes during his early years led him more
strongly toward art than toward science, became the pupil of
Washington Allston, then the greatest of American artists, and
accompanied his master to England, where he remained four years. His
success at this period was considerable; but on his return to
America, in 1815, he failed to obtain commissions for historical
paintings, and after working on portraits for two years at
Charleston, S.C., he removed first to Washington and afterward to
Albany, finally settling in New York. In 1825 he laid the
foundations of the National Academy of Design, and was elected its
first president, an office which he filled until 1845. The year 1827
marks the revival of Morse's interest in electricity. It was at this
time that he learned from Professor J. F. Dana, of Columbia College,
the elementary facts of electro-magnetism. As yet, however, he was
devoted to his art, and in 1829 he again went to Europe to study the
old masters.
The year of his return, 1832, may be said to close the period of his
artistic, and to open that of his scientific, life. On board the
packet-ship Sully, which sailed from Havre, October 1, 1832, while
discussing one day with his fellow-passengers the properties of the
electro-magnet, he was led to remark: "If the presence of
electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no
reason why intelligence may not be transmitted by electricity."
It was not a novel proposition, but the process of formulating it
started in his mind a train of new and momentous ideas. The current
of electricity, he knew, would pass instantaneously any distance
along a wire; and if it were interrupted a spark would appear. It
now occurred to him that the spark might represent a part of speech,
either a letter or a number; the absence of the spark, another part;
and the duration of its absence, or of the spark itself, a third; so
that an alphabet might be easily formed, and words indicated. In a
few days he had completed rough drafts of the necessary apparatus,
which he displayed to his fellow-passengers. Five years later, the
captain of the ship identified under oath Morse's completed
instrument with that which Morse had explained on board the Sully,
in 1832.
During the twelve years that followed Morse was engaged in a painful
struggle to perfect his invention and secure for it a proper
presentation to the public. The refusal of the Government to
commission him to paint one of the great historical pictures in the
rotunda of the Capitol, seemed to destroy all his old artistic
ambition. In poverty he pursued his new enterprise, making his own
models, moulds, and castings, denying himself the common necessaries
of life, and encountering embarrassments and delays of the most
disheartening kind. It was not until 1836 that he completed any
apparatus that would work, his original idea having been
supplemented by his discovery, in 1835, of the "relay," by means of
which the electric current might be reinforced or renewed where it
became weak through distance from its source. Finally, on September
2, 1837, the instrument was exhibited to a few friends at his room
in the University building, New York, where a circuit of 1,700 feet
of copper wire had been set up, with such satisfactory results as to
awaken the practical interest of the Messrs. Vail, iron and brass
workers in New Jersey, who thenceforth became associated with Morse
in his undertaking.
Morse's petition for a patent was dated September 28, 1837, and was
soon followed by a petition to Congress for an appropriation to
defray the expense of subjecting the telegraph to actual experiment
over a length sufficient to establish its feasibility and
demonstrate its value. The Committee on Commerce, to whom the
petition was referred, reported favorably. Congress, however,
adjourned without making the appropriation, and meanwhile Morse
sailed for Europe to take out patents there. The trip was not a
success. In England his application was refused, on the alleged
ground that his invention had been already published; and while he
obtained a patent in France, it was subsequently appropriated by the
French Government without compensation to himself. His negotiations
also with Russia proved futile, and after a year's absence he
returned to New York.
On February 23, 1843, Congress passed the long-delayed appropriation
of $30,000; and steps were at once taken to construct a telegraph
from Baltimore to Washington. On May 24, 1844, it was used for the
first time, Mr. Morse himself sending over the wires the first and
ever-to-be-remembered message, "What hath God wrought."
[Illustration: Samuel F. B. Morse, Inventor of the Telegraph.]
Morse's parents were already secured to him and his associates, and
companies were soon formed for the erection of telegraph lines all
over the United States. In the year 1847 he was compelled to defend
his invention in the courts, and successfully vindicated his claims
to be called the original inventor of the electro-magnetic recording
telegraph. Thenceforward Morse's life was spent in witnessing the
growth of his enterprise, and in gathering the honors which an
appreciative public bestowed upon him. As years went by he received
from the various foreign governments their highest distinctions,
while in 1858 the representatives of Austria, Belgium, France, the
Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, the Holy See, Sweden, Tuscany, and
Turkey appropriated the sum of 400,000 francs in recognition of the
use of his instruments in those countries.
The telegraph is not the only great success with which the name of
Samuel Morse is honorably connected. Having made the acquaintance of
Daguerre in Paris, he studied with him the infancy of photography,
and was the first to take sun pictures, or daguerreotypes, in
America. Also it was he who made the first submarine electric cable.
This was laid in New York Harbor; and from it he was the first to
conceive that stupendous idea of the transoceanic telegraph. In the
preparations for laying the first Atlantic cable he took an active
part, though the attempt of 1857, in which he personally engaged,
was not successful. He died April 2, 1872, at New York, where his
statue in bronze now stands in the Central Park.