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Samuel Morse

Page about the inventor of the Morse code, Samuel F.B. Morse (b. 1791, Charlestown, Massachusetts). He graduated from Yale in 1810. I quote: Aboard the Sully in 1832, Morse had a conversation with another passenger, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, about Joseph Henry's development of electromagnetism, and he understood that electrical impulses could convey information through wires. Upon returning to America, Morse partnered with Leonard Gale, a professor of science at New York University, and Alfred Vail, heir to Speedwell Iron Works. They began development of Morse's machine. By 1837, Morse had a working model. The first machine used a paper ticker-tape-like system of dips in a line of print. The words were represented by a numbered code that had to be decoded via use of a dictionary written by Morse. They improved on the first model, and in 1838 created the system of dots and dashes, employing a code for each letter that could be sound-read. It used a system of relays in which an electric circuit in one place was used to electromagnetically open and close another circuit that was further away. In early February, 1838, Morse demonstrated his telegraph machine before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Commerce. The committee chair, F.O.J. Smith (D-ME), was very interested in the concept and partnered with Morse, Gale, and Vail. He kept his involvement secret, and on April 6, 1838, sponsored a bill in Congress to appropriate $30,000 for the construction of telegraph lines. The bill was not acted upon until March of 1843, when Congress approved the expenditure to build telegraph lines from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland. The first successful transmission via the newly-constructed Washington-Baltimore line took place on May 24, 1844. The first message, chosen by the daughter of the Commissioner of Patents, was transmitted from the Chamber of the Supreme Court in Washington to the B&O Railroad depot in Baltimore, fifty miles away: It said, "What hath God wrought?" a quotation from the Bible. Morse code is still in existence today. The modern version was developed by Friedrich Clemens Gerke in 1848, and, after minor changes, was standardized as International Morse Code in 1865.

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