Samuel F. B. Morse Painter Inventor 1791-1872

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born on April 27, 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. At Yale College, Morse was not a good student but he became interested in the new subject of electricity. He also enjoyed painting miniature portraits. After college, Morse went to England to study painting. In 1825 he returned to New York City and became one of the most respected portrait painters of his time. He was the first president of the National Academy of Design. Samuel Morse also ran for mayor of New York City and for U.S. Congressman, but lost in both those campaigns.   In 1832, after studying art again in Europe, Morse met some others people who shared his interest in electricity and how it could be used to send messages. One day, while drawing in his sketchbook, he came up with the idea of running an electrical current along a metal wire strung between two places. If in one location, the current was interrupted for a moment, the interruption could be detected almost instantly at the other end of the wire. He then made up a Morse Code, in which a combination of short interruptions (dots) and long interruptions (dashes) stood for each letter of the alphabet. By 1835 he had his first telegraph model working in the New York University building where he taught art. To make the model he used an old artist's canvas stretcher to hold it, a home-made battery and an old clock-work to move the paper on which dots and dashes were to be recorded. By 1838, Morse could transmit ten words per minute with this telegraph. During the next few years Morse exhibited his telegraph to businessmen and committees of Congress, hoping to get money to give the telegraph a large-scale test. Most people felt that a message could not be sent from city to city over wire. However, Morse finally got$30,000 from Congress to build the first telegraph line in the U.S. from Baltimore to Washington, DC--a distance of thirty-seven miles. On May 24, 1844, Morse sent the first message---"What Hath God Wrought!" Morse and his partners went into business, setting up telegraph systems all over the country. Morse became wealthy from his patent of the telegraph and he was generous in giving money to colleges and poor artists. He died in New York city on April 2, 1872. Back to Massachusetts Webquest