Samuel Morse

ENGL212-DD

The Victorian Internet Blog

 By:Gemma

            Samuel Morse, an American inventor who played a big part in the invention of the telegraph system, was born Samuel Finley Breese Morse on April 27^th, 1971 in Charlestown Massachusetts. In 1805 at the age of fourteen, Morse entered Yale College and graduated in the year 1810. He attended lectures on electricity while at Yale.  Morse was interested in painting and was able to support himself during school with his talent. In 1811 he attended the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Morse produced a sculpture named The Dying Hercules and has painted several portraits. In 1825, Morse opened his own art studio in New York. Like many artists, Morse proved to be a great inventor with motivation and drive. He taught himself how electrical currents can work. Though it took several years, eventually the telegraph system was perfected and commonly used throughout the world with his help. Thankfully Morse was able to see the success of his invention before he died of pneumonia on April 2, 1872.

Samuel Morse

By Lora

Samuel Morse was born in Massachusetts, in 1791. He was a painter. Commissioned to paint a portrait of an American military hero; the marquis de Lafayette. While travelling across the Atlantic, two weeks into the voyage, a discussion with a scientific passenger about electromagnetism changed his life. Since then, he decided to work on building an electric telegraph. His two main reasons for building such an invention were: to make money; and a because of a previous emotional experience relating to his wife’s death. His wife died while he was abroad and he didn’t receive the letter of her death early enough in order to be present at her funeral.

Morse had visions of a wired world. He believed that Europe and North America would be connected by a wire; a wire that would link telegraph networks on both sides of the Atlantic.     Working on his invention, Morse had run into the problem of sending messages over long distance wires. Guided by a helpful academic -a chemistry professor Mr. Gale-, he had the breakthrough that he was looking for. Morse was finally able to send a signal over a long distance (through ten miles of wires). The next challenge that Morse faced was to convince others of the superiority of his invention. The electric telegraph was not viewed as a useful form of communication in day to day life. This view made it difficult for Morse to win the support of the Congress to build a model network.  He finally decided to construct lines of major commercial routes radiating out of New York using private money. In 1845, the Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed, and the construction of lines between several cities began. In January 1846, the Magnetic Telegraph Company completed the first link between New York and Philadelphia.

Source:  Standage, Tom. (2007). The Victorian Internet.

Samuel Morse

By Jisheng

Samuel Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1791. On February 7, 1825, while Morse was in Washington, his wife died in New Haven. The journey to New Haven was four days’ from Washington. Due to the low efficiency of sending messages, Morse’s wife was dead and buried before he made it home. Morse was an artist by profession. He was in the process of creating the gallery of the Louvre on one canvas when he stumbled upon the electric telegraph. In 1832, while Morse was on his way back to the United States from Europe he heard the story of the Nollet experiment and electrified monks. After this journey he became obsessed by the possibility of using electricity to send messages. This obsession drove him to build the electric telegraph.

Source: Standage, Tom. (2007). The Victorian Internet.

Samuel Morse

By Jordan

Samuel F.B Morse was born on April 27^th 1792 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Morse was an accomplished painter before the death of his wife, which triggered his interest and dedication towards means of long distance communication. On a sea voyage, Morse met Charles Thomas Jackson, a man who was well educated in term of electro magnetism. When arriving to the USA, after having seen Charles’s electromagnetism demonstration during his trip, he was inspired to develop the concept of the Single wire telegraph. Also known as  “The Morse Code”. Professor Leonard Gale helped Morse with difficulties encountered while trying to carry the signal over few hundreds yard. Thanks to Gale help, Morse introduced an extra relay and was able to send messages over 10 miles of wire. As a result, Morse received a patent for the telegraph in 1847. On April 2nd of 1972, Morse died of pneumonia at his home in New York City.

Source: Standage, Tom. (2007). The Victorian Internet.

Samuel Morse

By Sixuan

He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, U.S.A. In 1825, Morse missed his wife Lucretia’s funeral in New Haven, Connecticut because of the speed constrain that a message could be sent from New Haven to Washington at that time in the United States. In 1832, he was introduced the electromagnetism and electricity by Dr. Charles Jackson of Boston on board a ship Sully from Europe to the United States. He started the idea of building an electric telegraph since then. During six weeks on the Sully, Morse invented the signaling code from 0 to 9, which is now well-known as Morse Code, and found out a way to record signals automatically on paper based on electromagnet with the help of Dr. Charles Jackson. Morse then spent five years building his telegraph system while being a professor of literature of the arts of design at New York University. Chemistry professor Leonard Gale at New York University, who was a personal friend of American physicist Joseph Henry, helped Morse solve the problem of sending transmitting signals over long distances. They teamed up and were soon joined by Alfred Vail, who funded the building of a complete set of instruments. Morse and Vail modified the original design and replaced the number system with an alphabetic code. (Standage, 2007)

Standage, T. (2007). The Victorian Internet. New York: Walker Publishing Company.

Samuel Morse

by Olga

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American contributor to the invention of an electromagnetic telegraph system based on European telegraphs, co-inventor of the Morse code, and an artful painter. Morse supported himself and his wife by painting, and he was known to “to capture the essence of America’s culture and life” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Morse). In 1825, the city of New York commissioned Morse to paint a portrait of Marquis de Lafayette in Washington. While Morse was painting, a horse messenger delivered a letter saying “Your dear wife is convalescent”. Morse immediately left Washington for his home in New Haven, leaving the portrait of Lafayette unfinished. By the time he arrived his wife had already been buried. Shortly after this event Morse decided to dedicate himself to the invention of a faster way to communicate over long distances. Beginning in 1836, Samuel F. B. Morse, the American physicist Joseph Henry, and Alfred Vail developed an electrical telegraph system. This system sent pulses of electric current along wires which controlled an electromagnet that was located at the receiving end of the telegraph system. Samuel Morse was well appreciated around the world and received a number of awards and patents. Among these is a patent for the telegraph in 1847, which was issued by Sultan Abdülmecid who personally tested the new invention. Morse received: the decoration of the Order of Glory, set in diamonds, from the Sultan Ahmad I ibn Mustafa of Turkey (1847); a golden snuff box containing the Prussian gold medal for scientific merit from the King of Prussia (1851); the Great Gold Medal of Arts and Sciences from the King of Württemberg (1852); and the Great Golden Medal of Science and Arts from Emperor of Austria (1855); a cross of Chevalier in the Légion d’honneur from the Emperor of France; the Cross of a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog from the King of Denmark (1856); the Cross of Knight Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, from the Queen of Spain. Morse was also an elected member of innumerable scientific and art societies in the United States and other countries. Other awards include Order of the Tower and Sword from the kingdom of Portugal (1860); and Italy conferred on him the insignia of chevalier of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus in 1864. Morse’s telegraph was recognized as an IEEE Milestone in 1988. In the USA, Morse had his telegraph patent for many years; however, it was ignored and even contested. In 1853 the case of the patent came before the U.S. Supreme Court where, after a thorough investigation, it was ruled that Morse had been the first to combine the battery,electromagnetism, the electromagnet and the correct battery configuration into a working telegraph. Nonetheless, in spite of this ruling, Morse still received no official recognition from the United States government.

Works Cited
Standage, T. The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s on-Line Pioneers. Walker &Company, 2007. Print.
“Samuel Morse”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 20 Mar. 2012.

The Morse Code 

By Zhitao

In 1836, Samuel Morse who was born in Charlestown, Mass. on April 27, 1791, demonstrated the ability of a telegraph system to transmit information over wires. The information was sent as a series of electrical signals. Short signals were referred to as dits (represented as dots) and long signals were referred to as dahs (represented as dashes). Morse code was also called the American Morse code.

It was widely used throughout Europe and America in mid 1800’s land-line communications and has continued to be used to the present in America for this form of Land-Line telegraphic communication in which the signals were carried across the land by lines supported by telegraph poles.
Land-line communications used “sounders” to allow the receiving operator to “hear” the clicking sounds of the code and to translate them into letters. The early “Morse Code” was well suited for this form of communication but could not easily be used for radio telegraphic communication due to the embedded spaces which were actually an integral part of several letters. For instance, the letter ” o ” was dot-space-dot in the original Morse Code.