The secret of Samuel Morse and his electric telegraph
Website design By BotEap.com“There is now nothing left for invention to achieve but to discover something new before it takes place,” reported a reporter for the New York Herald in 1844. The reporter was referring to the electric telegraph, a terminal invention of the Industrial Revolution that transformed how the American West was ‘won’.
Website design By BotEap.comIn the space of twenty years, the telegraph became the standard means of communication for all the disparate elements in this vast landscape. Suddenly, the soldier, the rancher, and the railroad operator could send long-distance messages in minutes through copper wires strung from poles that snaked across the landscape like an eruption. By 1861, the Pony Express, upon which the nation had relied, had passed into history.
Website design By BotEap.comAnd one man in particular, Samuel Morse, had become very wealthy. It was his single-circuit telegraph system that was installed throughout the country, and his name is inextricably linked throughout the world with his invention.
Website design By BotEap.comHowever, 19th century archives reveal numerous examples of people who worked in the field of telegraphy: men like the Victorian scientist and inventor Charles Wheatstone. He would have liked to point out that his ABC telegraph system had been in operation on the Great Western Railway in Great Britain for six years when Samuel Morse broadcast “What God Hath Done” in 1844.
Website design By BotEap.comScientists and historians view the invention of the telegraph as a series of small, interlocking discoveries dating back to Roger Bacon, the 13th-century monk and philosopher. So how did someone who began their career as an artist triumph over them?
Website design By BotEap.comMorse never claimed to be a great scientist or an accomplished artist. He was an entrepreneur, brimming with ideas, making things happen. Since his days as an undergraduate at Yale, he moved comfortably between two worlds.
Website design By BotEap.comYoung Morse was as comfortable with the arts as he was with the sciences. When he wasn’t listening to Professor Dale reading about electricity, he could be found with brush and canvas in a studio. Morse enjoyed studying Art at the Royal Academy in London as much as he enjoyed listening to Professor Dana on electromagnetism and electricity at the New York Athenaeum.
Website design By BotEap.comConsciously or unconsciously, Morse refused to be typecast. Paradoxically, this split personality may have helped him. Echoing the great Enlightenment scholars, his focus was always broad and his mind always open to new ideas.
Website design By BotEap.comSamuel Morse soaked up the knowledge like a sponge. He never missed an opportunity to discuss and learn from others. Returning home from Europe on the packet ship ‘Sully’ in 1832, he struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler, the American physician and scientist Charles Thomas Jackson.
Website design By BotEap.comMorse, who came up with the idea of using electricity by means of a telegraph in Paris, did not hesitate to question Jackson. He was anxious to ask her about his recent studies with the great French scientists: men like Ampere and his work on electromagnetism.
Website design By BotEap.comThe two men also shared what they knew about Benjamin Franklin and the speed of electricity. Back on American soil, Samuel Morse wasted no time in conversing with the American physicist Joseph Henry, who had recently invented a working telegraph.
Website design By BotEap.comSamuel Morse didn’t just accumulate data, he collected people. He was very good at cultivating men of influence and gathering the right people around him. No man can do it all, he acknowledged himself. The inventor was astute enough to judge when he acquired influence and experience, and astute enough to recognize it when he saw it.
Website design By BotEap.comMorse needed $30,000, a substantial sum, to bring his idea to life, and he knew the government could provide it. But he realized that he was not to be given away lightly and he needed an influential voice.
Website design By BotEap.comHe was able to call two of those voices. Congressman FOJ (Francis Ormond Jonathan) Smith of Maine secured the necessary funds, along with his old friend and first commissioner of the Patent Office, Henry Ellsworth. As a gesture of thanks, Morse allowed Ellsworth’s daughter to compose that first telegraphic message.
Website design By BotEap.comAt Alfred Vail, Morse recognized someone with the necessary mechanical skills to build his machine. Vail also had a father, Morse observed, with a smithy that offered the perfect workshop to build the machine. For good measure, Vail senior also helped finance trips to Europe to obtain patents there. For day-to-day management, Morse knew he could trust Amos Kendall, the former Postmaster General.
Website design By BotEap.comAll of these people helped Morse for a reason. Some, like Ellsworth, liked him; others, like Smith, received money for winning. Everyone saw in this man a particular quality: passion. Morse had an enthusiasm that was contagious. Vail, as a student at the City University of New York, watched in fascination as Morse stretched 1,700 feet of cable spanning 2 classrooms. So impressed was the young man that he persuaded his father to support the businessman.
Website design By BotEap.comOne quality that was quickly appreciated by people who knew the inventor was his tenacity. The patent application for his electric telegraph machine took 5 long years. Vail lost interest and returned to Philadelphia to work for his father, but Morse never gave up.
Website design By BotEap.comPerhaps it explains why, with his name on the patent, Morse accepted all the credit when the rewards came, despite the fact that Vail contributed much to the success of Morse Code, including the refinement of the shipping key and the printing of the telegraph. . .
Website design By BotEap.comOnce the patent was granted and sales took off, Morse never relaxed. He fought to the end for recognition as the first to produce a single-circuit telegraph, in the face of the reluctance of the government and his peers to recognize his achievements.
Website design By BotEap.comRivals like Alexander Bain and the Royal House found out in court that this was a man you challenged at your peril. The final cash payment, $2 million in today’s money, with the guarantee of future royalties, was a fitting reward, Morse must have felt, for his persistence.