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“What God Hath Wrought”

 


  
 
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S a m u e l F. B. M o r s e

Samuel Finley Breese Morse, (1791-1872), was a famous American inventor and painter. Morse graduated from Yale in 1810 and went on to study painting in England. In 1815, he took up portrait painting and was quite successful in this field. Morse helped to found the National Academy of Design and served as its first president.

In 1827, Morse became interested in electricity. In 1832, he began a 12-year period perfecting his version of an electric telegraph, for which he subsequently received the first patent for this type of device.

In 1844, Morse demonstrated to Congress the practicality of the telegraph by transmitting the famous message "What hath God wrought" over a wire from Washington to Baltimore. He later experimented with submarine cable telegraphy.

T h e E l e c t r i c T e l e g r a p h

Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872), successfully exploited Henry's invention commercially. From 1837 Morse gave the telegraph his full attention, having set up in partnership with Alfred Vail, Professor Leonard Gail, and congressman F O J Smith. Vail provided funds and facilities at the family ironworks, and Smith legal expertise. There’s an irony, therefore, that disagreements with Vail led to litigation; Vail provided funds for lawyers, too. The telgraph was eventually patented in Morse’s name alone, an event granted by the US Supreme Court in 1854.

The telegraph was the first device to send messages using electricity. Telegraph messages were sent by tapping out a special code for each letter of the message with a telegraph key. The telegraph changed the dots and dashes of this code into electrical impulses and transmitted them over telegraph wires. A telegraph receiver on the other end of the wire converted the electrical impulses to dots and dashes on a paper tape. Later, this code became universal and is now known as Morse Code.

" My price is five dollars for a miniature on ivory, and I have engaged three or four at that price. My price for profiles is one dollar, and everybody is willing to engage me at that price. " - Samuel Morse

 
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