Who is Samuel F.B. Morse ?

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Samuel F.B. Morse (Apr 27, 1791 - Apr 2, 1872), an American inventor and artist. Morse developed the electric telegraph and the signaling code that bears his name. He established the first U.S. telegraph link between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., in 1844, inaugurating instantaneous long-distance communication. (The Bettmann Archive) Samuel Finley Breese Morse, (b. Charleston, Mass., April 27, 1791, d. April 2, 1872) achieved distinction both as an artist, particularly as a painter of miniatures, and as an inventor. Morse was the son of a Calvinist minister. He was educated at Yale College but also went to Europe for art training. It was during the return voyage from one such trip (1832) that he conceived of an electromagnetic signaling system. Although Morse continued with his artistic activities in New York and became first president of the National Academy of Design, serving from 1826 to 1845, his main activity after 1837 was the development of an electric TELEGRAPH. Systems making use of a deflecting magnetic needle had already been developed by a number of workers, particularly Sir W. F. Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone, who installed the first railway telegraph system in England in 1837. Morse's important contribution was that he based his receiver on the ELECTROMAGNET. This feature ultimately ensured the universal adoption of his system. When the electromagnet was energized by a pulse of current from the sender, a soft iron armature was attracted to the magnet, producing a V-shaped deflection in the straight line being recorded on a moving strip of paper by a pencil attached to the armature. The grouping of a succession of such marks symbolized the words of a message. Morse soon devised a code whereby letters and numbers were represented by combinations of dot and dash symbols, which corresponded to signals of short and long duration (see MORSE CODE). With the aid of Alfred Vail, the original receiver was greatly improved and adapted to print the dot-and-dash symbols. Such a system was used in the first U.S. telegraph link that Morse set up in 1844 between Baltimore and Washington. Morse defended his patent vigorously and secured recognition by the Supreme Court in 1854. In addition, he held a chair in Natural Science at Yale.   [Eric Eastwood] Bibliography: Larkin, Oliver W., Samuel F. B. Morse and American Democratic Art (1954); Mabee, Carleton, The American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (1943; repr. 1969); Morse, El L., ed., S. F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, 2 vols. (1914; repr. 1980); Prime, Samuel I., The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (1875; repr. 1974).

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