Birth and educationSamuel F.B. Morse was born on April 27, 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the first child of geographer and pastor Jedidiah Morse and Elizabeth Ann Breese Morse.[2] Jedidiah was a great preacher of the Calvinist faith and supporter of the American Federalist party. He not only saw them as great preservers of Puritan traditions (strict observance of the Sabbath), but believed in their idea of an alliance with English in regards to a strong central government. Jedidiah strongly believedin education within a Federalist framework alongside the instillation of Calvinist virtues, morals and prayers for his son. After attending Phillips Academy in Andover, Samuel went on to Yale College to receive instruction in the subjects of religious philosophy, mathematics and science of horses. While at Yale, he attended lectures on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day. He earned money by painting. In 1810, he graduated from Yale.
Morse's Calvinist beliefs are evident in his painting the Landing of the Pilgrims, through the depiction of simplistic clothing as well as the austere facial features. This image captured the psychology of the Federalists; Calvinists from England brought to the United States ideas of religion and government thus forever linking the two countries. More importantly, this particular work attracted the attention of the famous artist, Washington Allston. Allston wanted Morse to come with himto England to meet the famous British artist Benjamin West. An agreement for three year stay was made with Jedidah and young Morse set sail with Allston aboard the Lydia on July 15, 1811.
Upon his arrival in England, Morse diligently worked on perfecting painting techniques under the careful eye of Allston and by the end of 1811; he gained admittance to the Royal Academy. At the Academy, he fell in love with the Neo-classical art work of the Renaissance paying close attention to Michelangelo and Raphael. After observing and practicing sketches of curvatures and muscle formations, the young artist successfully created his own masterpiece, Dying Hercules. Immediately, Benjamin West secured Morse s position at the Academy and received a gold medal from the Adelphi Society. He left England on August 21, 1815 and began his full time career as an American painter.
The years, 1815-1825, mark significant growth in Morse s paintings as he sought to capture the true essence of America s culture and life. He sought commissions in Charleston, South Carolina (1818). Morse s painting of Mrs. Emma Quash symbolized the opulence of Charleston. It seemed for the time being, the young artist was doing well for himself.
Between 1819 and 1821, Morse experienced a great change in his' life. Commissions ceased in Charleston when the city was hit with an economic recession. He was commissioned to paint President James Monroe (1820). Monroe embodied Jeffersonian Democracy by favoring the common man over the aristocrat; later reemphasized upon the ascension of Andrew Jackson.
There were two defining commissions that shaped Morse s art career from his return to New Haven until the establishment of the National Academy of Design. The Hall of Congress (1821) and the Marquis de Lafayette (1825) embroiled Morse s sense of democratic nationalism.
Morse felt a great degree of honor of painting the Marquis de Lafayette, leading supporter of the American Revolution. He felt compelled to paint a grandiose portrait of the man who helped to establish a free and independent America. In his image, he enshrouds Lafayette with a magnificent sunset as he stands to the right of three pedestals of which two are Benjamin Franklin and George Washington with the final reserved for him. A peaceful wooden landscape below him symbolized American tranquility and prosperity as it approach the age of fifty. The developing friendship between Morse and Lafayette and the discussion of the Revolutionary War, affected the artist upon returning to New York City.
Morse was in Europe for three years improving his painting skills, 1830-1832, travelling in Italy, Switzerland and France. The project he eventually selected was to paint miniature copies of some 38 of the Louvre's famous paintings on a singlecanvas (6 ft. x 9 ft) which he entitled "The Gallery of the Louvre". He planned to complete "The Gallery of the Louvre" when he returned home to Massachusetts and to earn an income by exhibiting his work and charging admission. This was typical ofMorse who stumbled haphazardly from one money-making scheme to another in those days.
On the sea voyage home in 1832 Morse encountered Charles Thomas Jackson of Boston who was well schooled in electromagnetism. Witnessing various experiments with Jackson's electromagnet, Morse developed the concept of a single wire telegraph, and "The Gallery of the Louvre" was set aside. He was devising his telegraph code even before the ship docked. In time the Morse code would become the primary language of telegraphy in the world.
By 1835 he probably had his first telegraph model working in the New York University building where he taught art. Being poor, Morse used in his model such crude materials as 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.
In 1836 Morse ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York under the Nativist banner, gathering only 1496 votes.
Morse encountered the problem of getting a telegraphic signal to carry over more than a few hundred yards of wire. His breakthrough came from the insights of Professor Leonard Gale, who taught chemistry at New York University (a personal friend of Joseph Henry). With Gale's help, Morse soon was able to send a message through ten miles (16 km) of wire. This was the great breakthrough Morse had been seeking.
In 1837 Morse acquired two partners to help him develop his telegraph. One was Leonard Gale, a quiet professor of science at New York University who advised him, for example, on how to increase voltage byincreasing the number of turns around the electromagnet. The other was Alfred Vail, a morose young man who made available both his mechanical skills and his family's New Jersey iron works to help construct better telegraph models.
With the aid of his new partners, Morse applied for a patent for his new telegraph in 1837, which he described as including a dot and dash code to represent numbers, a dictionary to turn the numbers into words and a set of sawtooth type for sending signals. Morse, discouraged with his art career, was giving nearly all his time to the telegraph.
By 1838, at an exhibition of his telegraph in New York, Morse transmitted ten words per minute. He had dispensed with his number-word dictionary, using instead the dot-dash code directly for letters. Though changes in detail were to be made later, the Morse code that was to become standard throughout the world had essentially come into being.
In 1838 a trip to Washington, D.C. failed to attract federal sponsorship for a telegraph line. Morse then traveled to Europe seeking both sponsorship and patents, but in London discovered Cooke and Wheatstonehad already established priority.
In 1839, from Paris, Morse published the first American description of daguerreotype photography by Louis Daguerre.
Morse made one last trip to Washington, D.C., in December 1842, stringing "wires between two committee rooms in the Capitol, and sent messages back and forth -- and, for some reason, this time some people believed him, and a bill was finally proposed allocating $30,000 towards building an experimental line".
The general public was highly skeptical, and there were also a great many skeptics in Congress. A thirty eight-mile (61km) line was constructed between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. The most convincing demonstration was when the results of the Whig National Convention at Baltimore in the spring of 1844 reached Washington via telegraph prior to the arrival of the first train. On 24 May 1844 the line (which ran along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad between the Capitol and Baltimore) was officially opened as Morse sent his famous words "What hath God wrought" along the wire.
In May 1845 the Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed in order to radiate telegraph lines from New York City towards Philadelphia, Boston, Buffalo, New York and the Mississippi.
The Morse telegraphic apparatus was officially adopted as the standard for European telegraphy in 1851. Britain (with its British Empire) remained the only notable part of the world where other forms of electrical telegraph were in widespread use (they continued to use the needle telegraph invention of Cooke and Wheatstone).
In the United States, Morse had now had his patent for many years, but it was being both ignored and contested. In 1853 the case of the patent came before the Supreme Court where, after very lengthy investigation, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that Morse had been the first to combine the battery, electromagnetism, the electromagnet and the correct battery configuration into a workable practical telegraph. Nevertheless, in spite of this clear ruling, Morse still received no officialrecognition from the United States government. Assisted by the American Ambassador in Paris, the governments of Europe were approached regarding how they had long neglected Morse while using his invention. There was then a widespread recognition that something must be done, and "in 1858 Morse was awarded the sum of 400,000 French francs (equivalent to about $80,000 at the time) by the governments of France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, Sweden, Tuscany and Turkey, each of which contributed a share according to the number of Morse instruments in use in each country."
There was still no such recognition in the USA. This remained the case until 10 June 1871, when a bronze statue of Samuel Morse was unveiled in Central Park, New York City.
By 1847, with enough money from the telegraph, Morse was at last able to bring his scattered family together in an ample country home of his own. He bought a house with one hundred acres of land just outside of Poughkeepsie and named it Locust Grove .
In the 1850s, Morse became well known as a defender of America's institution of slavery, considering it to be divinely sanctioned. In his treatise "An Argument on the Ethical Position of Slavery," he wrote: "My creed on the subject of slavery is short. Slavery per se is not sin. It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom. The mere holding of slaves, therefore,is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler."
Samuel Morse was a generous man who gave large sums to charity. He also became interested in the relationship of science and religion and provided the funds to establish a lectureship on 'the relation of the Bible to the Sciences'. Morse was not a selfish man. Other people and corporations made millions using his inventions, yet most rarely paid him for the use of his patented telegraph. He was not bitter about this, though he would have appreciated more rewards for his labors. Morse was comfortable; by the time of his death, his estate was valued at some $500,000.
Died of pneumonia at his home 5 West 22nd St. in New York
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