[SFDXA] Wonderful facts(some previously unknown) about Samuel B Morse

[Bill]

 From the CWops List:
Bill W2CQ
*
**Wonderful facts(some previously unknown) about Samuel B Morse*


From: Vic VE3YT 
<mailto:vicd at uwaterloo.ca?subject=Re:%20FW%3A%20A.Word.A.Day--moribund>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2019 11:14:31 PDT

I'm just finishing a fascinating biography of Samuel FB Morse, by 
Kenneth Silverman, a retired NYU professor.  Here's some interesting 
stuff I didn't know about him:

He grew up in Charlestown MA, but his mother's family was from the 
south, and in later life, while he abhorred the Civil War, he was 
politically active as an anti-Abolitionist.  His father, a 
Congregationalist minister, had a side hustle as a world-famous 
publishing geographer.  He sent Morse off to prep school, so "Finley" 
(as he was known when young) never got to go on any of his father's 
trips.  Morse went to Yale at the age of 15 or so and became an artist, 
studying intensively in Europe and supporting himself with portrait work 
while yearning to do historical paintings of some importance.  He did a 
large painting of the House of Representatives, which toured the U.S., 
and another of the Louvre, including about 20 masterpieces on the wall 
such as the Mona Lisa.  All this time he was almost penniless, living 
apart from his wife and first set of children.  His wife died young and 
the children were looked after by relatives.

In 1826 Morse founded the National Academy of Design in New York, which 
legitimized artists in the U.S. and laid the foundation for the art 
world in NYC.  As a revered artist, Morse led the N.A.D. for 18 years or 
so.  He taught art as a professor at NYU.

In 1832, (at the age of about 40) Morse was sailing back from France on 
a ship called the Sully, and had conversations with fellow passengers 
about electromagnetism and Ampere's experiments.  Someone mentioned long 
wires must slow the flow of electricity, and a physicist/geologist from 
Boston, Charles Jackson, replied that Ben Franklin showed that 
electricity flowed through any length of wire "instantly".  This got 
Morse thinking about using electromagnetism to transmit intelligence to 
any part of a circuit at once, and he started making sketches of his 
ideas on the voyage.

By 1837 he had a prototype of an instrument that used a printer's 
composing stick (which I guess was a long wooden stick that formed a 
tray for movable type), containing grooved metal blanks that could be 
pulled through metal rollers to make or break a circuit.  So the message 
had to be coded by inserting the metal into the stick before sending.  
The receiver was a weird wooden frame like the stretcher for an artist's 
canvas, that had an armature suspended vertically that was deflected by 
an electromagnet in the same circuit.  The armature made marks on a 
strip of paper rolled past the armature by a clockwork device.  Morse's 
idea was to send numbers representing words in a dictionary, so the 
numbers might be 1, 2, 3, 4 digits or maybe longer, and you looked them 
up in the dictionary which he spent about a year writing.  He made a big 
deal out of the recording aspect of his device, that is, that the 
armature movements were preserved on the paper.

The idea of an electromagnetic telegraph (although Morse was the first 
to use that word) was "in the ether" and people were beginning to 
announce the invention of such systems in Europe by 1837, which pushed 
Morse to start publicizing his invention and seeking patents in various 
countries.  Part of the impetus was a system of semaphores, used over 
distances of 100 miles or so in France, where operators sat in towers 
looking for semaphore signals from nearby towers and repeating them.  
This only worked in daylight in good weather, but was a "network" put in 
place by the government.  Other countries were considering similar 
networks and inventors were persuading them to consider using 
electricity.  Some early telegraphs looked like semaphore devices, with 
two arms that changed angles.  In 1838, Morse saw a system likely to be 
adopted in England, patented by Wheatstone, which used five wires and a 
receiver with two needles.  It did not record the transmission, and 
Morse criticized the system on the basis that the "signals were 
evanescent", that is, the position of the needles had to be written down 
or lost forever.  It was slower than Morse's system, but Wheatstone 
demonstrated transmission over 19 miles.

As Morse publicized his invention, Dr. Jackson challenged his rights to 
the invention, suggesting it was his own idea.  This was only the first 
of several legal challenges Morse would face in trying to achieve his 
dream of interconnecting humanity by projecting intelligence, while 
seeking recognition for his role and preserving enough ownership to 
benefit financially.  As he approached Congress to adopt his system, and 
sought patents and adoption in England and Europe. Morse was 
continuously demonstrating his telegraph and experimenting to increase 
the length of wire used.  An NYU Professor Gale helped him use a 
stronger battery.  A thirty-year old former student, Alfred Vail, did 
Morse's machining and was probably responsible for many of the 
innovations in keys and sounders.  The telegraph could now achieve 
distances of 20 miles before the current gave out.  In 1837, Morse 
invented the relay, which I think was huge leap, creating a device which 
has had so many applications he couldn't foresee.  Morse and Vail signed 
an agreement giving Vail one-quarter interest in the rights to the 
telegraph in the U.S. and one-half overseas.  Morse conferred or sold 
rights in his invention and eventual patents many times, to accomplish 
exploitation and his goal of projecting intelligence, often without 
checking with other rights-holders.

In 1838, Morse applied for funding from the U.S. Committee of Commerce 
to experiment with a 50 mile telegraph.  The Chair of the Committee, F. 
O. J. Smith, urged Morse to accept him as a business partner.  Morse had 
always had difficulty getting government commissions as an artist, and 
felt he needed someone with government expertise.  Before long, he would 
refer to Smith as FOG Smith, because Smith constantly tried to 
out-maneuver Morse as telegraph networks were built.

In early 1939, Morse dropped the composer's stick in favor of a key that 
created dots and dashes on the paper at the receiver. Pictures of the 
Morse key from the mid-1940s look very similar to our straight keys, 
albeit without a knob -- just a circular area at the end of the lever -- 
and a leaf spring under the lever extending forward to a position on the 
base near the hand.  Morse by now had met Louis Daguerre in France and 
became interested in daguerrotypes, using Daguerre's 75 page manual. In 
early 1940, he spent two years making "photographic paintings" and soon 
got some kind of honor for Daguerre from the National Academy of Design.

Morse also met Colt around 1840 at NYU.  Morse was interested in Colt's 
attempts to conduct electricity through water to ignite explosives, and 
Morse eventually demonstrated a telegraph ...

In 1942 Morse renewed his efforts to get an appropriation from Congress 
for an experimental telegraph line.  He got a favorable endorsement from 
Prof. Joseph Henry at Princeton, probably the premier electricity 
researcher in America, who later became the first head of the 
Smithsonian.  In 1843 Morse got $30,000 approved for a line from 
Baltimore to Washington (`40 miles?) and planned to trench it along the 
Baltimore & Ohio railroad line.  He got Vail manufacturing the 
instruments, and Gale helped him inspect the wire and pipe.  F.O.J. 
Smith contracted out the trenching to his brother-in-law, and the 
manufacture of the lead pipe which was formed around the wire.  
Unfortunately, the hot mandrel process used by the manufacturer Smith 
selected shorted out the wire.  Eventually, Morse abandoned the idea of 
burying the wires, and contracted Ezra Cornell of Ithaca NY (who later 
founded the university bearing his name) to erect posts along the railway.

The Washington-Baltimore line officially opened in 1944 with the 
inaugural message "What hath God wrought" sent between Morse and Vail.  
Early uses included transmission of the selection of the Whig party 
presidential candidate and the fall presidential elections.  Newspapers 
realized the importance of the telegraph for reporting, and for the next 
few decades they often took an editorial stance that supported the 
telegraph entrepreneurs who promised them the lowest rates.  (A telegram 
was about a penny per word then.)

In 1945 Morse met Amos Kendall, a mid-50s lawyer and politician who had 
served as Postmaster General for five years.  He helped Morse get 
funding and rights of way for more telegraph lines, and sell rights to 
others, as the use of telegraphy exploded. Other systems, such as one by 
House, arose, often as a way of circumventing Morse's patent.  House's 
system had a piano keyboard of 28 keys, one per letter, and a lot of 
complicated machinery.  Morse formed Magnetic Telegraph.  A fellow named 
O'Reilly used the House telegraph for some of his lines which included 
Buffalo to Detroit to Milwaukee, and had plans for New Orleans.  As 
other companies sprung up, they often united to ensure enough capital to 
stay in business, in one case forming Western Union.

In 1948, Morse married a much younger woman, a deaf-mute, and had 
another four children.  By now he could afford a country estate in New 
York and in 1950, built a townhouse in NYC.

By the mid-1850's, Morse lines were spreading all over Europe. Morse was 
wearying of endless fights with FOG Smith and O'Rielly, and began 
thinking of linking the U.S. and Europe with a sub-Atlantic cable.  In 
1854 he joined forces with a rich businessman paper manufacturer, Cyrus 
Field, who started the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph 
Company.  Morse started working on cable designs, but was sidetracked by 
claims by Prof. Henry that he had invented a significant fraction of the 
telegraph.  Morse responded with a 90-page document, calling Henry a 
befogged academic who misrepresented their meetings.

By 1856, Field had a 100 mile road built in Newfoundland and the 
telegraph lines were in place for the North American end of the 
trans-Atlantic cable.  He licensed or invested in a "Hughes telegraph", 
a multi-keyed affair similar to House, much to Morse's frustration.  
Morse and his wife travelled Europe for four months, visiting telegraph 
offices and heads of state, and getting honors and much recognition at 
fancy dinners for his role in telegraphic communication.  By July he was 
in England, working as the "electrician" for the submarine cable 
project, with an English counterpart.  The initial plan was for two 
large ships, the Niagara (in Liverpool) and the Agamemnon (in Greenwich) 
to take cable on board, then sail to the mid-Atlantic, where the two 
ships would join their cable, then one would proceed to Ireland while 
the other went to Newfoundland.  This was changed to start laying cable 
at Ireland, so they could continuously test the cable, using telegraph, 
between shore and ship as it was layed.  The cable was seven strands of 
copper wire, covered in gutta-percha, then wrapped in tarred yarn and 
spiral wound iron wire.  It weighed one ton per mile and was quite 
flexible.

After a couple of false starts they were successfully laying cable, 
until about 200 miles from shore the ocean floor dropped radically, and 
the cable began playing out too quickly, so they stopped the cable.  
Morse awoke and came on deck to see drops of tar exuding from the 
cable.  After three hours, the telegraph stopped working, perhaps due to 
a short.

The next year, another attempt failed.

The third attempt was made without Morse.  Field's company removed Morse 
as electrician.  Morse was in the midst of receiving a payment, 
organized by France, from ten European countries which had benefitted 
from the telegraph.  England did not participate.  So, he was travelling 
to Europe to receive the payment of $80,000 the same summer, 1858, when 
the third cable laying attempt succeeded.  After ten days of testing, 
the first official messages were sent.  But three months later, the line 
went dead.  Field was accused of staging fake success to sell $375,000 
worth of stock.

Meanwhile, business matters were finally looking up for Morse. In 1859, 
the North American Telegraph Association paid for Magnetic Telegraph to 
join as a member, which gave Morse enough funds to live comfortably for 
the rest of his life.  He bought his NYC townhouse and built a study in 
the vacant lot next door.

Finally, in 1866, Field successfully laid a trans-Atlantic cable.  Morse 
was enjoying France then, and sent Field a telegram of congratulations.  
He also increased his his shares in Field's company from 600 to 800, 
buying the new 200 shares by telegram to New York sent for a cost of $30.

In his last few years, Vail's widow, who claimed her husband invented 
the telegraph, joined forces with FOG Smith and O'Rielly in efforts to 
publicly dethrone Morse as the inventor of the telegraph.  Smith wrote 
the Monuments Association, instructing them to honor Henry instead of 
Morse on a planned telegraph memorial.  In February 1872, just before he 
died in early April, Morse received a draft 16-page chapter on the 
American Magnetic Telegraph from an upcoming book "Great Industries of 
the United States."  It said Morse was a fraud without the scientific 
knowledge or entrepreneurial skill required.  It gave credit to Henry 
for the invention, Vail for the mechanical designs and FOG Smith for the 
commercialization.

Samuel FB Morse died April 2, 1872.

Silverman's book has no details about Morse code itself.  At one point 
he describes Morse in a telegraph station, probably in the 1840s, 
telling one of ten or so telegraphers to lengthen the space between the 
dots in his "O" to make it more clear.  I would be very interested to 
hear any reproductions of the telegraphic American code as it was used 
in Morse's lifetime.

Best 73
Vic VE3YT