Masters of Space / Morse and the Telegraph; Thompson and the Cable; Bell and the Telephone; Marconi and the Wireless Telegraph; Carty and the Wireless Telephone

by Walter Kellogg Towers

We have seen that Wheatstone was early trained as a musician. Samuel Morse began life as an artist. But while Wheatstone early indicated his lack of interest in music and devoted himself to scientific studies while yet a youth, Morse's artistic career was of his own choosing, and he devoted himself to it for many years. This explains the fact that Wheatstone attained much scientific success before Morse, though he was eleven years his junior.

It was in 1791 that Samuel Morse was born. Samuel Finley Breese Morse was the entire name with which he was endowed by his parents. He came from the sturdiest of Puritan stock, his father being of English and his mother of Scotch descent. His father was an eminent divine, and also notable as a geographer, being the author of the first American geography of importance. His mother also was possessed of unusual talent and force. It is interesting to note that Samuel Morse first saw the light in Charlestown, Massachusetts, at the foot of Breed's Hill, but little more than a mile from the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin. He came into the world about a year after Franklin died. It is interesting to believe that some of the practical talent of America's first great electrician in some way descended to Samuel Morse.

He received an unusual education. At the age of seven he was sent to a school at Andover, Massachusetts, to prepare him for Phillips Academy. At the academy he was prepared for Yale College, which he entered when fifteen years of age. With the knowledge of science so small at the time, collegiate instruction in such subjects was naturally meager in the extreme. Jeremiah Day was then professor of natural philosophy at Yale, and was probably America's ablest teacher of the subject. His lectures upon electricity and the experiments with which he illustrated them aroused the interest of Morse, as we learn from the letters he wrote to his parents at this time.

One principle in particular impressed Morse. This was that "if the electric circuit be interrupted at any place the fluid will become visible, and when it passes it will leave an impression upon any intermediate body." Thus was it stated in the text-book in use at Yale at that time. More than a score of years after the telegraph had been achieved Morse wrote:

The fact that the presence of electricity can be made visible in any desired part of the circuit was the crude seed which took root in my mind, and grew into form, and ripened into the invention of the telegraph.

We shall later hear of the occasion which recalled this bit of information to Morse's mind.

But though Yale College was at that time a center of scientific activity, and Morse showed more than a little interest in electricity and chemistry, his major interest remained art. He eagerly looked forward to graduation that he might devote his entire time to the study of painting. It is significant of the tolerance and breadth of vision of his parents that they apparently put no bars in the path of this ambition, though they had sacrificed to give him the best of collegiate trainings that he might fit himself for the ministry, medicine, or the law. As a boy of fifteen Samuel Morse had painted water-colors that attracted attention, and he was possessed of enough talent to paint miniatures while at Yale which were salable at five dollars apiece, and so aided in defraying his college expenses.

After his graduation from Yale in 1810, Morse devoted himself entirely to the study of art, still being dependent upon his parents for support. He secured the friendship and became the pupil of Washington Allston, then a foremost American painter. In the summer of 1811 Allston sailed for England, and Morse accompanied him. In London he came to the attention of Benjamin West, then at the height of his career, and benefited by his advice and encouragement.

That he had no ambition other than his art at this period we may learn from a letter he wrote to his mother in 1812.

My passion for my art [he wrote] is so firmly rooted that I am confident no human power could destroy it. The more I study the greater I think is its claim to the appellation divine. I am now going to begin a picture of the death of Hercules, the figure to be large as life.