TOBY'S CORNER

Date: May 7, 1999

Samuel F. B. Morse

Morse was born as the oldest son of Jedidah Morse and Elisabeth Ann Breese on April 27, 1791, in Charleston Massachusetts. His father was a distinguished clergyman and geographer. Morse matriculated at Yale, where he developed a passion for painting miniature portraits, and a gen to study historical painting in England were he entered London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Returning to the United States in 1815, after four years abroad, he found no patrons for his historical canvases, and turned to portraits in order to survive in New York city. (webstatione.com)

But Morse also hat scientific and mechanical interests and after 1822 he showed a continuous interest in electrical experimentation. For eons mankind had communicated over long distances in two basic ways: by sight and by sound - that’s by bearon fires and the pondering of jungle drums. (webstatione.com) So Morse started working on a telegraph and with the help and discoveries of many scientists and inventors, he was able to invent one of the most important inventions in the 19^th century.

The probably most important invention to Morse’s telegraph was the Battery by Alesandro Volta. Without the Battery Morse would not have been able to get his telegraph to work. Also the discovery of the relationship between electricity and magnetism by Danish physician Hans Christian Orsted was very important, because the telegraph consists of a electromagnet - a device that becomes magnetized when activated by electrical impulses and rups against a metal contact. This electromagnet, however, wasn’t invented by More, either. The discovery of the electromagnet belongs to William Sturgean in 1825. (Engelbert, 64)

Morses dream of a way to communicate with any point in the world instantly became bigger and bigger. In a letter from Europe to his parents he wrote:

"I whish that in a instant I could communicate information,

but three thousand miles are not passed over in an instant and we must wait four long weeks before we can here from each other." (Streissguth, 29)

Around 1830 in France, Morse saw the semaphore system invented by Claude Oruppe int the eighteenth century. Messages would travel from cities and small towns to Paris in a matter of minutes. At the time, the semaphore was the fastest method of sending messages from one point to another. Morse liked the idea of the semaphore and used it as a inspiration for his later telegraph. This shows again that without the inspiration of the semaphore he maybe never would have been able to invent the telegraph. (Streissguth, 29)

On his way back to America in 1832 Morse got another hint for his telegraph by Dr. Charles T. Jadson, while thinking about ways to increase the speed of communication, Jadson showed Morse the activities of a electromagnet and he also introduced Morse into Faraday theory, that believed electric current produced lines of force. After that Morse became a big fan of Faraday. (Streissguth)

That Morses telegraph was based on the discoveries and inventions of many scientists is clearly shown after Morse arrived back in the United States. Morse began making blue prints for his first telegraph, using all the discoveries and inventions of the scientists he had met and read about. Morse was just the person how saw the picture in the big puzzle and was able to put it together. A paragraph out of a MEMRI document about Morse pretty good summarizes all that:

The principals that laid behind the invention of the telegraph had existed in nature since the planet’s creation. In a sense, God worked the primary miracle by constituting all matter as he did, in the form of electrons, but he left the lights of a S. Morse to figure out how to use those electrons to send messages like his.

Another very important in the invention of the telegraph was Morse’s invention of the Morse code. A universal code consisting out of dots and slashed that was adopted pretty fast by the communication community and made it very easy to use the telegraph. But to the first working telegraph Morse still needed the help of his good friends and other scientists.

For his work an his invention Morse could use the facilities at the University of New York (now New York University), were he was the nations first professor of art to experiment with telegraphs. Here again Morse needed the help of another scientist to improve his invention. By 1836 he had constructed his first working telegraph, but however, he could make his system work only over short distances. But with the help of professor Leonard D. Gale, who showed him how to construct more powerful batteries and electromagnets, and how to arrange a series of batteries and electromagnets in a relay system, he also could solve the short distances problem, what definitely was another big step in the invention of the telegraph. (Englebert, 65)

But this was no the end, now Morse needed money, to support his telegraph and to be able to built up a system on a bigger scale and present it to the community, which also was a big step to the invention of the telegraph, because without money the telegraph would never have been sprat out over the country. With the financial support of Alfred Vail and Joseph Henry, and in 1838, of Congressman F. O. J. Smith of Main, in the belief that Smith could help Morse secure federal funds for the construction of a telephone line in the United States, Morse was able to raise some money. (webstatione.com)

In April 1838, Congress granted $30.000 for the construction of a line between Washington and Baltimore. Samuel Morse never could have been able to get the money without the help and support of of Joseph Henry, Alfred Vail and Congressman Smith and that also could have been the end of the telegraph. (Encyclopedia Americana, 476)

In 1839 Morse developed a transmitter that would send messages in Morse Code, which he had invented a couple years earlier, and 5 years later, in May 1844 he send his first message over the new telegraph system which stated: "What Hath God Wrought!" This message was send over a distance of 40 miles (65 km), leading into an age of successful long-distance transmissions. (Encyclopedia Americana, 476)

This was the point a new revolution began, because the telegraph would become one of the most important inventions in the 19^th century, because int would shrink the vastness of the United States, great networks to quicken commerce, and channels for the discentination of news. (webstatione.com). You can clearly see that the telegraph was one of the most important inventions in the 19^th century, because by the mid-1800, telegraph links had been established between most population areas in the United States. (Engelbert, 67)

The first telegraph was also a building block of new improvements and later coming inventions, like in 1872, American J. B. Streams’ design of a wiring system that enabled two messages to be send, one in each direction, at the same time and in 1879, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison invented the quadraplex, a four-message wiring system. (Engelbert, 66-67)

George B. Presscott expressed the expansion of the telegraph very good; it clearly shows that the telegraph was one of the most important inventions of the 19^th century: "The wires extend not only trough every State in the Union from Maine to Texas and from Massachusetts to Kansas, but already they are creeping over the Rocky Mountains." (Larkin, 181)

But the telegraph was not only famous in America, but also in Europe. New founded telegraph companies gave banquets to Morse. That shows again how important the telegraph to the people of the 19^th century was. (gms.com)

I think Samuel Morse gave something very important to the world by inventing the telegraph and introducing a age of fast communications. I don’t want to call him the American Leonardo, as some people do, but for sure he was a genius, and he holds a place in our pantheon of secular saints for his remarkable contributions to the age of communication. (webstatione.com)

 Works Cited

Engelbert, Phillis. Technology in Action: Science Applied to Everyday Life. Ed. Jane Hoehner. Detroit: U"X"L, 1999.

Larkin, Oliver W.. Samuel F. B. Morse and American Democratic Art. Ed. Oscar Handlin. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954.

M. Monique. Samuel Morse. 4 April 1999. 5:50 pm.

Streissguth, Thomas. Communications: Sending the Message. Minneapolis: The Oliver Press, Inc., 1997.

The Encyclopedia Amerericana International Edition. CT: Golier Incorporated, 1987.

                   The First Electronic Church of America. MEMRI. 11 April 1999. 11:20 am.