Samuel morse biography timeline designs

American inventor and painter (–)

For other uses, see Samuel Morse (disambiguation).

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, – April 2, ) was an American inventor and painter. After establishing his reputation as a portrait painter, Morse, in his middle age, contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs. He was a co-developer of Morse code in and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.

Personal life

Samuel F. B. Morse was born in Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts, the first child of the pastor Jedidiah Morse, who was also a geographer, and his wife Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese. His father was a great preacher of the Calvinist faith and supporter of the Federalist Party. He thought it helped preserve Puritan traditions (strict observance of Sabbath, among other things), and believed in the Federalist support of an alliance with Britain and a strong central government. Morse strongly believed in education within a Federalist framework, alongside the instillation of Calvinist virtues, morals, and prayers for his first son. His first ancestor in America was Anthony Morse, of Marlborough, Wiltshire, who had emigrated to America in , and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts.

After attending Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Samuel Morse went on to Yale College to study religious philosophy, mathematics, and science. While at Yale, he attended lectures on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day and was a member of the Society of Brothers in Unity. He supported himself by painting. In , he graduated from Yale with Phi Beta Kappa honors.

Morse married Lucretia Pickering Walker on September 29, , in Concord, New Hampshire. She died on February 7, , of a heart attack shortly after the birth of their third child. He married his second wife, Sarah Elizabeth Griswold on August 10, , in Utica, New York and had four children.

Painting

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, –April 2, ) is famous as the inventor of the telegraph and Morse Code, but what he really wanted to do was paint. He was a well-established artist when his youthful interest in electronics resurfaced, leading to the communications invention that changed humanity until it was overshadowed by the telephone, radio, television, and, finally, the internet.

Early Life and Education

Samuel F.B. Morse was born on April 27, , in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the first child of noted geographer and Congregational minister Jedidiah Morse and Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese. His parents were committed to his schooling and the Calvinist faith. His early education at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, was undistinguished, except for his interest in art.

He next enrolled in Yale College (now Yale University) at age 14, where he focused on art but found a new interest in the little-studied subject of electricity. He earned money by painting small portraits of friends, classmates, and teachers before graduating in with Phi Beta Kappa honors.

He returned to Charlestown after college. Despite his wishes to be a painter and encouragement from famed American painter Washington Allston, Morse's parents wanted him to be a bookseller's apprentice. He became a clerk for Daniel Mallory, his father's Boston book publisher.

Trip to England

A year later, Morse's parents relented and let him sail to England with Al

The National Museum of American History and photographer Robert Weingarten are working in collaboration to build a historic portrait with help from the public. During the week of May , the museum will present five blogs about significant individuals in American history. Between May , visitors can vote on which of these historic figures they would most like to see depicted in the portrait. Once a winner is announced, the public will have further opportunity to contribute to Weingarten’s unique process of visual biography. The finished portrait will be displayed at the Smithsonian this fall.

This project is inspired by the exhibition Pushing Boundaries: Portraits by Robert Weingarten, on view July 2-October 14 at the Smithsonian’s International Gallery, Ripley Center on the National Mall.

On May 24, , Samuel F. B. Morse sent an electrical message from the Supreme Court Chambers in Washington, D.C., to his associate Alfred Vail at the Mt. Clare railway station in Baltimore. The now famous message “What Hath God Wrought” was not the first telegraph message ever sent nor was this the first working telegraph, but Morse’s success caught the attention of the American public and made him an American hero.

Portion of the first long-distance telegraph message transmitted by Morse and transcribed in his hand

Morse was a moderately known artist before turning to telegraphy in While aboard ship returning from three years of art study in Europe, he became inspired by conversations with other passengers about electrical devices and began sketching. Those drawings recorded his thoughts about the possibility of sending messages by way of electrical impulses through a wire and included the first version of his binary code.

During the next four years, Morse studied electricity and settled into his new position as a professor at the University of the City of New York. In he constructed a transmitter and receiver using, among other things, a pai

Samuel Finley Breese Morse, inventor of several improvements to the telegraph, was born in Charlestown, Mass. on April 27, As a student at Yale College, Morse became interested in both painting and in the developing subject of electricity. After his graduation in , he first concentrated on painting, which he studied in England. He would later become a well-known portrait artist.

After moving to New York in , he became a founder and the first president of the National Academy of Design. He also ran for office, but was defeated in both of his campaigns to become New York mayor. Meanwhile, Morse maintained a steady interest in invention, taking out three patents for pumps in with his brother Sidney Edwards Morse. It wasn't until that he first became interested in telegraphy.

That year, Morse was traveling to the United States from Europe on a ship when he overheard a conversation about electromagnetism that inspired his idea for an electric telegraph. Though he had little training in electricity, he realized that pulses of electrical current could convey information over wires. The telegraph, a device first proposed in and first built in , was an impractical machine up until that point, requiring 26 separate wires, one for each letter of the alphabet. Around that time, two German engineers had invented a five-wire model, but Morse wanted to be the first to reduce the number of wires used to one.

Between and , he developed a working model of an electric telegraph, using crude materials such as a home-made battery and old clock-work gears. He also acquired two partners to help him develop his telegraph: Leonard Gale, a professor of science at New York University, and Alfred Vail, who made available his mechanical skills and his family's New Jersey iron works to help construct better telegraph models.

Morse's first telegraph device, unveiled in , did use a one-wire system, which produced an EKG-like line on tickertape. The dips in the line h