Samuel Morse and the Story of the Electric Telegraph

Samuel Morse, who is called the father of the telegraph, was not a scientist. For most of his life he was a struggling artist, and a good one. Although he had difficulty selling his paintings during his lifetime, he is now considered a major American painter, and his work is exhibited in art museums. In 1832, Morse was returning from Europe where he had been studying painting. Onboard ship he heard another passenger talking about how electricity could travel through a wire in an instant. Morse had the idea that electricity could be used to send messages. If he had known how many scientists and inventors had already had the same idea, he might have never worked on developing a method of sending messages. But he didn t know, and his idea of creating a code out of dots and dashes, the Morse code, made the telegraph a practical method of sending messages through electric wires.