When discussing the Atlantic Cable episode, I touched upon the achievement of Samuel Morse in the development of the telegram. This episode of "Cavalcade of America" dealt with Morse's achievement. Born in 1791, Morse was originally not an inventor but a painter - going to England to study painting with American born Benjamin West. His first masterpiece was "The Dying Hercules", but he became (like fellow inventor Robert Fulton) a portrait painter.*
(*It was not so unusual for American artists to have several different areas of interest - another was museum entrepreneur (and early paleontologist) Charles Wilson Peale).
Morse started showing an interest in invention in the 1830s, when he started studying the possibility of sending a message over wires. His first experiments was in 1836. That year there was an achievement in Great Britain, where Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Cooke designed and patented the world's first electric telegram - a cumbersome machine where different wires were tied to a board with letters on it, and the signals chose the letters that made the message. The Wheatstone and Cooke device was used in England for several years, and proved it's worth in 1845, when a former Quaker businessman, John Tawell, poisoned his mistress Sarah Hart. Tawell was seen going onto a train to London, and he was dressed as a Quaker. The witness had the telegrapher send a message to detain the Quaker on the train. But the Wheatstone and Cooke telegraph had no "Q" on it, so "Q""U""A""K""E""R" became "K""W""A""K""E""R". It confused people in London - but someone figured it out. Tawell was spotted and followed to his lodgings, and arrested the next day (eventually he was tried and executed).
Nothing as dramatic involved in Morse's telegraph work. He was fortunate in relying on the help of the Secretary of the newly formed Smithsonian Institute, Joseph Henry. Professor Henry had worked on a simple device to send signals over wires, and showed it to Morse - and later let him build his own equipment upon Henry's experiments. Morse was able to get funding through an interested upstate New York State Congressman named Millard Fillmore. This government funding was critical to Morse in the final stages when he set up a fifty mile experiment between Washington D.C. and Baltimore, MD.**
(**Fillmore's aid to Morse may have been his most significant act as a Congressman - and (except for signing the Compromise of 1850) Fillmore's most important action in his political life).
On May 24, 1844 Morse sent the first words on his telegraph using the code of dots and dashes he created - "What Hath God Wrought?" The line was a success, but it took awhile to expand. Morse got his funding through Ezra Cornell, who became very wealthy due to the spread of the new device. Morse did too - possibly the first American inventor who really profited by his invention (Fulton did well too, but died rather early).
Unfortunately, after this great beginning Morse did one thing that has tarnished his reputation. He was a bigot. He was a leading supporter in the 1840s and 1850s of the American or Know Nothing Party, which was opposed to foreign immigration (mostly by the Irish and Germans, especially the Catholics)**. However, Morse did one other progressive act in his later years - he introduced daguerreotype photography to the United States, thus combining his interests in art and science at the end. He died in 1872.
(**It is just possible that it was Morse who influenced his friend, then ex-President Fillmore, to join the Know Nothing Party in 1855, and to be their candidate for President in 1856.)
(*It was not so unusual for American artists to have several different areas of interest - another was museum entrepreneur (and early paleontologist) Charles Wilson Peale).
Morse started showing an interest in invention in the 1830s, when he started studying the possibility of sending a message over wires. His first experiments was in 1836. That year there was an achievement in Great Britain, where Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Cooke designed and patented the world's first electric telegram - a cumbersome machine where different wires were tied to a board with letters on it, and the signals chose the letters that made the message. The Wheatstone and Cooke device was used in England for several years, and proved it's worth in 1845, when a former Quaker businessman, John Tawell, poisoned his mistress Sarah Hart. Tawell was seen going onto a train to London, and he was dressed as a Quaker. The witness had the telegrapher send a message to detain the Quaker on the train. But the Wheatstone and Cooke telegraph had no "Q" on it, so "Q""U""A""K""E""R" became "K""W""A""K""E""R". It confused people in London - but someone figured it out. Tawell was spotted and followed to his lodgings, and arrested the next day (eventually he was tried and executed).
Nothing as dramatic involved in Morse's telegraph work. He was fortunate in relying on the help of the Secretary of the newly formed Smithsonian Institute, Joseph Henry. Professor Henry had worked on a simple device to send signals over wires, and showed it to Morse - and later let him build his own equipment upon Henry's experiments. Morse was able to get funding through an interested upstate New York State Congressman named Millard Fillmore. This government funding was critical to Morse in the final stages when he set up a fifty mile experiment between Washington D.C. and Baltimore, MD.**
(**Fillmore's aid to Morse may have been his most significant act as a Congressman - and (except for signing the Compromise of 1850) Fillmore's most important action in his political life).
On May 24, 1844 Morse sent the first words on his telegraph using the code of dots and dashes he created - "What Hath God Wrought?" The line was a success, but it took awhile to expand. Morse got his funding through Ezra Cornell, who became very wealthy due to the spread of the new device. Morse did too - possibly the first American inventor who really profited by his invention (Fulton did well too, but died rather early).
Unfortunately, after this great beginning Morse did one thing that has tarnished his reputation. He was a bigot. He was a leading supporter in the 1840s and 1850s of the American or Know Nothing Party, which was opposed to foreign immigration (mostly by the Irish and Germans, especially the Catholics)**. However, Morse did one other progressive act in his later years - he introduced daguerreotype photography to the United States, thus combining his interests in art and science at the end. He died in 1872.
(**It is just possible that it was Morse who influenced his friend, then ex-President Fillmore, to join the Know Nothing Party in 1855, and to be their candidate for President in 1856.)