MORSE, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE.
Long before he reached the pinnacle of his fame, Samuel Finley Breese
Morse passed many quiet summer hours on the pleasant wooded borders of
the ravine overlooking the peaceful Sconondoah; and even to this day if
you wander through the beautiful Sconondoah wood and hunt out its
sequestered nooks, you will find here and there, cut deep in the rugged
bark of old forest trees, the initials S.F.B.M., carved by his hand more
than half a century ago.
Professor Morse was born at Charlestown, Mass., in 1791. He was the son
of a Congregational clergyman, who was the author of a series of school
geographies familiar to our fathers and mothers in their schooldays. He
was educated at Yale College, and, intending to become a painter, went
to London to study art under Benjamin West; but becoming interested in
scientific studies he was for many years president of the National
Academy of Design in New York. He resided abroad three or four years. On
returning home in 1832 the conversation of some gentlemen on shipboard
in regard to an experiment which had recently been tried in Paris with
the electro-magnet, interested him and started a train of thought which
gave him the conception of the idea of the telegraph. The question arose
as to the length of time required for the fluid to pass through a wire
one hundred feet long. Upon hearing the answer, that it was
instantaneous, the thought suggested itself to Prof. Morse that it might
be carried to any distance and be the means of transmitting
intelligence. Acting upon the thought, he set to work, and before the
ship entered New York harbor had conceived and made drawings of the
telegraph. He plodded on through weary years endeavoring to bring his
invention to perfection, meeting on every hand jeers and ridicule and
undergoing many painful reverses in fortune; but for his indomitable
will, he would have given up his project long before he succeeded in
bringing it before the public, for all thought it a wild scheme which
would amount to nothing.
In 1838 he applied to Congress for aid that he might form a line of
communication between Washington and Baltimore. Congress was quite
disposed to regard the scheme a humbug. But there was a wire stretched
from the basement of the Capitol to the ante-room of the Senate Chamber,
and after watching "the madman," as Prof. Morse was called, experiment,
the committee to whom the matter was referred decided that it was not a
humbug, and thirty thousand dollars was appropriated, enabling him to
carry out his scheme. Over these wires on the 24th of May, 1844, he sent
this message from the rooms of the U.S. Supreme Court to Baltimore:
"What hath God wrought!" and connected with this message is quite a
pretty little story. Having waited in the gallery of the Senate Chamber
till late on the last night of the session to learn the fate of his
bill, while a Senator talked against time, he at length became
discouraged, and confident that the measure would not be reached that
night went to his lodgings and made preparations to return to New York
on the morrow. The next morning, at breakfast, a card was brought to
him, and upon going to the parlor he found Miss Annie Ellsworth, the
daughter of the Commissioner of Patents, who said she had come to
congratulate him upon the passage of his bill. In his gladness he
promised Miss Ellsworth that as she had been the one to bring him the
tidings, she should be the first to send a message over the wires. And
it was at her dictation that the words, "What hath God wrought?" were
sent.
Success was now assured; honors and riches were his, and those who had
been slow to believe in the utility of his invention were now proud of
their countryman and delighted to do him homage. Upon going abroad again
he was received more as a prince than as a plain American citizen, kings
and their subjects giving him honor. It may be believed that even in his
wildest flights of fancy Professor Morse did not dream of the rapid
spread of the use of his invention, or look forward to the time within a
few years, when the telegraph wires would weave together the ends of the
world and form a network over the entire Continent.
A few years ago, the only telegraph wire in China was one about six
miles in length, stretching from Shanghai to the sea, and used to inform
the merchants of the arrival of vessels at the mouth of the river. A
line from Pekin to Tientsin was opened a short time since. The capital
of Southern China is in communication with the metropolis of the North,
and as Canton was connected by telegraph with the frontier of Tonquin at
the outbreak of the late political troubles, the telegraph wires now
stretch from Pekin to the most southern boundary of the Chinese Empire,
and China, ever slow to adopt foreign ideas, is crossed and re-crossed
by wires; we may say the thought which came to Prof. Morse upon that
memorable voyage has reached out and taken in the whole world.