The need to communicate faster
Now there's a sense in which this invention, combined with the telephone, led us to this modern day in which we carry a device about in our hands so we need never be out of touch if we don't want to be. I may never be able to entirely forgive him for this.
Like many creative people, Morse's interests were wide, as I mentioned in the last post.. Among those interests was electricity. But a couple of events occurred in his life that caused him to take up the study of electricity in earnest -- a death and a chance encounter.
As I mentioned last time, at one point Morse was an itinerant portraitist. While away from home doing one such commissioned portrait, his wife, who was pregnant with their third child, gave birth and subsequently died from complications of the delivery. A message had been sent to Morse telling him of the impending birth, urging him to return.
By the time the message arrived and he was able to arrive home, his wife had been buried. Some sources suggest that this planted the thought in Morse's mind that had he received the message much earlier, he would have been able to return home before the sad events occurred.
His parents died within a few years, and he decided to travel to Europe to deal with his grief. On the way home he encountered people on board discussing Michael Faraday's development of the electromagnet and began to wonder if this device could be used as the basis for a communication system. Among these passengers was Charles Thomas Jackson, who had experimented with electromagnetism, and he spent much time discussing his work with Morse. He created a sketch of a possible system while on board.
By this time Morse had taken a position at what is now New York University, teaching painting and sculpture. His career as an artist was pretty much over, and he devoted much of his spare time learning about electricity from fellow professor Leonard D. Gale, who taught chemistry but was familiar with the work being done by Princeton's Joseph Henry, a leader in the field of electricity.
At this point, it's important to understand that Morse was not the only person working on the idea of long-distance communication. A primitive system had been developed and put into use in France by 1798. And a pair of Brits had developed their own system and put it into use about the same time Morse was working on his ideas. Henry had published a paper outlining a possible electric telegraph, which Morse did not know about. Gale may have made him aware of it.
Gale contributed to the telegraph's development by serving as Morse's "what about" guy and showed him how to boost a signal by using multiple batteries along the path instead of relying on one big battery at the signal's source. Morse also hired a technician name Alfred Vail to help in the work. Vail helped Morse develop the simple, binary code we call by Morse's name.
Morse's big contribution to telegraphy was to develop what became known as single-wire telegraphy, and much simpler system than any other system in operation. He tested the apparatus a couple of times, sending messages across short distances and then applied to Congress for funds to build a system from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., which he received. After a technical glitch with his first idea, an underground installation, an above-ground installation using trees and poles was completed.
In 1844, Morse made his first public demonstration, tapping out the code for one of those oft-quoted famous messages: What hath God wrought.
He obtained a patent for the telegraph in 1847 and immediately encountered litigious opposition from both his partners and other inventors. The litigation wound up being decided bythe Supreme Court in 1854.
Morse made much of his eventual fortune by licensing his technology around the world and settled into a life of philanthropy.
Image: Drawing by Samuel F.B. Morse of his telegraph. This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.
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