He made his living as an artist, but love for family led Samuel Morse (1791–1872) to invent a communication system that laid the groundwork for our lightning-speed technology today, when we have information at our fingertips.
Although raised in Charlestown, Massachusetts, Morse moved when he married and settled his growing family in New Haven, Connecticut. Painting was his passion and he worked hard to improve his skills.
His growing success as a portrait painter brought in commissions. He painted portraits of early American patriots, including John Adams and James Monroe. In 1825, Morse was sent to Washington to paint a portrait of the French military officer Marquis de Lafayette.
While working on Lafayette’s portrait, a courier delivered a message that his wife was ill after delivering their third child. He immediately set out on horseback to be at his wife’s side. Before he reached home, his beloved 25-year-old wife, Susan Walker Morse, had succumbed to her illness and had already been buried.
This heartbreak was the first of other personal losses that grieved him deeply. The next year his father passed away. Then, his mother died three years later.
The Telegraph
After giving himself time to heal, Morse decided to return home in 1832. After he had settled himself back in the United States, he changed his career from painter to inventor. Soon, Morse met Charles Thomas Jackson, an inventor who taught Morse about electromagnets.Morse and Jackson discussed how electronic impulses could travel through wires. Morse was immediately intrigued and made sketches of a device that might actually send messages: the single wire telegraph.
Morse developed the first single wire telegraph, but his device could only send messages short distances. He then started working with Leonard Gale, a professor at New York University, and the two were able to transmit messages over 10 miles.
Morse then partnered with inventor and machinist Alfred Vail. In 1838, they organized a public showing of their device: Morse sent a message over two miles without an additional power source. His first message said, “A patient waiter is no loser.”
Despite his success, Morse struggled with getting patents. A telegraphy device using several wires had been invented earlier, and many others were attempting to make a single wire telegraph around the same time as Morse.
Morse Code
Morse and Vail also came up with a code of dots and dashes that could easily be transmitted by the telegraphic system. Vail helped Morse master the system in 1840 by figuring out the letters and when to pause to make words. This alphabetic code, consisting of dots and dashes (called “dits” and “dahs”), was demonstrated in 1844, and would become known as “Morse Code.”The first model used electronic signals that made indentations of dots and dashes on a piece of paper. The people on the receiving end then found that they could translate the messages just by listening to the clicks of the electric current.
During the Civil War, reporters on the front could telegraph their reports to their newspapers in minutes. Morse’s system met the need for timely news, which foreshadowed the establishment of the Associated Press.
Although Morse Code and the telegraph are no longer used today, Morse’s telegraphy system paved the way for companies that made communication faster, such as Western Union, once the largest telegraph operator in the United States.
Today, we can communicate almost instantly using our computers to connect with friends and relatives, and we have a man who loved his family to thank.
