By Sharon Oliver
Contributing Writer
BOSTON Before the invention of the telephones, fax machines and satellites, people used telegraphs as a form of communication, thanks to its inventor Samuel Morse whose name is perhaps more synonymous with the Morse code.
Boston native began as a painter
Born the son of a pastor in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood in 1791, Morse began his career as a professional painter and while married to his wife Lucretia Pickering Walker, the couple had three children. He received commissions to paint portraits of Presidents John Adams and James Monroe, a list of wealthy merchants, and a series of allegorical works depicting the inner workings of the U.S. government to hang in the halls of Congress.
In February 1825, Morse was away in Washington, D.C. working on a painting commission. While he was on this trip, he received a letter from his father stating that his wife was gravely ill. By the time he returned home to New Haven, Connecticut after receiving the standard, slow-moving horse delivered mail, she had already died and had been buried. Lucretia Morse was just 25 years old. Devastated by the loss and the time it took for the message of her illness to reach him; her death would become the impetus for his work on the telegraph.
During a voyage from England, Samuel Morse met a scientist named Charles Thomas Jackson who told him about the properties and mechanics of electromagnetism. Excited about the news of electricity being able to travel for such long distances over copper wires, Morse started working on a device for that purpose.
Commercial success
Inventors in the U.S. and Europe tried developing electric telegraphs in the 1820s using different ways to achieve their goal but American inventor Joseph Henry’s method of using electromagnetics to send electricity as far as a mile of wire caused a bell to sound at the other end of the wire. However, it was Morse who perfected Henry’s method and developed the single-wire electric telegraph, making it a commercial success.
Morse demonstrated his device to the public in 1838, but it was not until 1843 that Congress gave him $30,000 to build an experimental telegraph line that traveled 40 miles from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. The first news wire was sent in May 1844, before the line was fully completed. It was news that the Whigs had nominated Henry Clay to run as their candidate for president was wired to the Capitol by Morse’s partner Alfred Vail.
Later that month, after the line was fully finished, the next formal telegraph was sent, “What hath God wrought?” and delivered by 17-year-old Annie Ellsworth, the daughter of Morse’s friend and Yale classmate Henry Ellsworth. Young Annie was rumored to have a crush on the much older, widowed inventor. In 1835, Ellsworth had been appointed as the first Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office and quickly became a champion of American inventions.
Soon, Morse and his partners began building new lines connecting New York and Philadelphia and small telegraph companies opened across the country. His dream of widespread, rapid dissemination of information over enormous distances came to fruition in 1861 when Western Union built the first telegraph line that spanned the continent. By 1866, the first permanent telegraph cable had been successfully laid across the Atlantic Ocean.
These days, with ever increasing technology, the telegraph is mostly rendered obsolete. Nevertheless, Charlestown native Samuel Morse helped change the world after suddenly losing his wife and having a new-found commitment to improve the state of long-distance communication. Some of Morse’s paintings and sculptures are on display at his Locust Grove estate in Poughkeepsie, New York.
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