"IT WASN'T UNTIL AFTER HE FAILED AS AN ARTIST THAT MORSE REVOLUTIONIZED COMMUNICATIONS BY INVENTING THE TELEGRAPH."
-Historian David McCullough "MORSE'S GROWING DISGUST WITH AMERICAN CULTURE COINCIDED WITH SOME EARLY TINKERING WITH CIRCUITS AND THAT LED TO THE TELEGRAPH."
-Interview with Paul Staiti, Author of 'Samuel F.B. Morse' While painting the 'Gallery of the Louvre' in France, Samuel Morse came up with the idea for his telegraph and the beginnings of photography with the daguerreotype. Morse's telegraph improved upon the French telegraph in that it transformed information into electrical form, using Morse Code. Morse gave a public demonstration in 1838, but Congress didn't fund his first commercial telegraph until 1844. An experimental line was laid between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland and was used to transmit the first message, "What Hath God Wrought."
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"Morse had seen France's form of communication using towers with levers and they would transmit messages long distance - visually. But Morse saw that this presented a falsehood in the system. One it wouldn't work at night, in the snow or the rain or the fog and why couldn't it be done with electricity? So he invented the telegraph."
- Historian David McCullough, 'The Greater Journey' |
David McCullough. Author. 2010. NPR.
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"THE SCIENTIFIC IMPULSE OF PAINTERS"
Lance Mayer, Independent Conservator. 2012. Taylor Walsh
"Telegraph Sounder." YouTube. 2007.