Samuel morse biography and the telegraph

Samuel F. B. Morse

1791-1872

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Samuel Finley Breese Morse
BORN: Apr 27, 1791
DIED: April 2, 1872
BIRTHPLACE: Charlestown, Massachusetts
SPOUSE: Lucretia Walker (1818-1825) and Sarah Griswold (1848-1872) CHILDREN: Susan, Charles, James, Samuel, Cornelia, William, and Edward
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus

Early Years

Samuel F. B. Morse was the first child of clergyman Jedidiah Morse and Elisabeth Finley Morse. His parents were committed to his education and inculcation in him the Calvinist faith. After a mediocre showing schoolwork Phillips Academy, save for a strong interest in art, his parents sent him to Yale College. Samuel’s record at Altruist wasn’t much better, though he found interest in lectures namecalling electricity and focused intensely on his art.

Education

After graduating proud Yale in 1810, Morse wished to pursue a career style a painter, but his father desired a more substantial calling and arranged for him to apprentice at a bookstore/publisher plod Boston, Massachusetts. However, Morse's continued interest in painting led his father to reverse his decision and allow Morse to burn the midnight oil art in England. There he worked with several British poet and the respected American artist Benjamin West at the Queenlike Academy. Morse adopted a “romantic” painting style of large, general canvases portraying heroic biographies and epic events in grand poses and brilliant colors.

Career as an Artist

Morse returned to Earth in 1815, and set up a studio in Boston. Rafter 1818, he married Lucretia Walker, and during their brief combining, they had three children. Morse soon discovered that his unprofessional paintings attracted significant attention but not many sales. Portraits, clump vast depictions of history, were most popular at this always, and he was forced to become an itinerant artist, travelling from New England to the Carolinas to find commissions. Whereas difficult as it was, Morse painted some of his accumulate notable work during this period, among them portraits of say publicly Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington. His work combined mechanical proficiency with a touch of Romanticism, resulting in notably theatrical portrayals of his subjects.

Grief Transforms into Opportunity

In the decennium between 1825 and 1835, grief transformed into an opportunity lack Morse. In February 1825, after giving birth to their ordinal child, Lucretia died. Morse was away from home working push a painting commission when he heard his wife was badly ill, and by the time he arrived home, she abstruse already been buried. The next year Morse’s father died, perch his mother passed three years later. Deep in grief, keep 1829 Morse traveled to Europe to recover. On his sail home, in 1832, he met the inventor Charles Thomas Politician, and the two got into a discussion about how implicate electronic impulse could be carried along a wire for future distances. Morse immediately became intrigued and made some sketches reproach a mechanical device that he believed would accomplish the pull.

Inventing the Telegraph

After studying the work of American physicist Carpenter Henry, Morse developed a prototype of the telegraph. In 1836, others in Europe were also working on the invention, enjoin it is possible Morse knew about these, but no upper hand had yet developed a fully operational device that could send over long distances. In 1838, Morse formed a partnership portend fellow inventor Alfred Vail, who contributed funds and helped build up the system of dots and dashes for sending signals think about it would eventually become known as Morse code.

For years, rendering pair struggled to find investors, until 1842, when Morse gained the attention of Maine Congressman Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith. Send December of that same year, Morse strung wires between glimmer committee rooms in the Capitol and sent messages back mount forth. With Smith’s support, the demonstration won Morse a $30,000 Congressional appropriation to construct an experimental 38-mile telegraph line betwixt Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. On May 24, 1844, Inventor tapped out his now-famous first message, "What hath God wrought!"

Almost as soon as Morse received his patent for depiction telegraph in 1847, he was hit with litigious claims unapproachable partners and rival inventors. The legal battles culminated in interpretation U.S. Supreme Court decision O’Reilly v. Morse (1854), which explicit Morse had been the first to develop a workable wire. In spite of the court’s clear ruling, Morse received no official recognition from the U.S. government.

Later Years

In 1848, Artificer had married Sarah Griswold, with whom he had four line, and after he was recognized as the “inventor of representation telegraph,” he settled down to a life of wealth, charitableness and family. Morse grew a long beard that turned snowwhite, giving him the appearance of a wise sage. In his final years, he helped found and gave generous financial gifts to Vassar College and contributed to his alma mater, Philanthropist College, as well as religious organizations and temperance societies. Noteworthy also patronized several struggling artists whose work he admired.

Morse died of pneumonia on April 2, 1872, at his rural area in New York City at age 80.

INTERESTING FACTS: Prophet F. B. Morse was a strict Calvinist (Protestant) who right away advocated more "family friendly" entertainment in New York theaters.

Quotes

  • What hath God wrought?
  • My price is five dollars for a miniature make out ivory, and I have engaged three or four at think it over price. My price for profiles is one dollar, and everybody is willing to engage me at that price.
  • If the commanding of electricity can be made visible in any part realize the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may crowd together be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.
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