Masters of Space. Walter Kellogg Towers
various points.
The automatic transmitter brought knighthood to its inventor, Wheatstone receiving this honor in 1868. Wheatstone took an active part in the development of the telegraph and the submarine cable up to the time of his death in 1875.
Wheatstone's telegraph would have served the purposes of humanity and probably have been universally adopted, had not a better one been invented almost before it was established. And it is because Morse, taking up the work where others had left off, was able to invent an instrument which so fully satisfied the requirements of man for so long a period that he is known to all of us as the inventor of the telegraph. And yet, without belittling the part played by Morse, we must recognize the important work accomplished by Sir Charles Wheatstone.
V
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF MORSE
Morse's Early Life—Artistic Aspirations—Studies in Paris—His
Paintings—Beginnings of His Invention—The First Instrument—The
Morse Code—The First Written Message.
When we consider the youth and immaturity of America in the first half of the nineteenth century, it seems the more remarkable that the honor of making the first great practical application of electricity should have been reserved for an American. With the exception of the isolated work of Franklin, the development of the new science of electrical learning was the work of Europeans. This was natural, for it was Europe which was possessed of the accumulated wealth and learning which are usually attained only by older civilizations. Yet, with all these advantages, electricity remained largely a scientific plaything. It was an American who fully recognized the possibilities of this new force as a servant of man, and who was possessed of the practical genius and the business ability to devise and introduce a thoroughly workable system of rapid and certain communication.
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.
When he had completed this picture to his own satisfaction, he showed it to West. "Go on and finish it," was West's comment. "But it is finished," said Morse. "No, no. See here, and here, and here are places you can improve it." Morse went to work upon his painting again, only to meet the same comment when he again showed it to West. This happened again and again. When the youth had finally brought it to a point where West was convinced it was the very best Morse could do he had learned a lesson in thoroughness and painstaking attention to detail that he never forgot.
That he might have a model for his painting Morse had molded a figure of Hercules in clay. At the advice of West he entered the cast in a competition for a prize in sculpture, with the result that he received the prize and a gold medal for his work. He then plunged into the competition for a prize and medal offered by the Royal Academy for the best historical painting. His subject was, "The Judgment of Jupiter in the Case of Apollo, Marpessa, and Idas." Though he completed the picture to the satisfaction of West, Morse was not able to remain in London and enter it in the competition. The rules required that the artist be present in person if he was to receive the prize, but Morse was forced to return to America. He had been in England for four years—a year longer than had originally been planned for him—and he was out of funds, and his parents could support him no longer.
Morse lived in London during the War of 1812, but seems to have suffered no annoyance other than that of poverty, which the war intensified by raising the prices of food as well as his necessary artist's materials to an almost prohibitive figure. The last of the Napoleonic wars was also in progress. News of the battle of Waterloo reached London but a short time before Morse sailed for America. It required two days for the news to reach the English capital. The young American, whose inability to sell his paintings was driving him from London, was destined to devise a system which would have carried the great news to its destination within a few seconds.
But while he gained fame in America and secured praise and attention as he had in London, he found art no more profitable. He contrived to eke out an existence by painting an occasional portrait, going from town to town in New England for this purpose. He turned from art to invention for a time, joining with his brother in devising a fire-engine pump of an improved