Today it takes only a short time to send a message to the most distant parts of the world. The man who made this possible was Samuel F. B. Morse. His invention was the telegraph.
Morse was not only a great inventor. He was also one of the best early American portrait painters. He gave up painting to give all his time to his invention. Then he set out to show how useful it was.
After a long struggle he succeeded. He lived long enough to see his telegraph span the United States and connect Europe with the United States.
Samuel F. B. Morse was born in Massachusetts in 1791. When he was 14, he entered Yale College. He was a very good student in electricity, but he was more interested in painting and drawing. He wanted to be an artist. He was a successful painter and won several medals and prizes. On one trip to the United States, he had an interesting idea. Later, this idea developed into his famous invention. Some of the other people on the boat were talking about the speed with which electricity can travel over a wire. Morse thought that it might be possible to use electricity to send a message over a wire. This message, he thought, could be recorded at the other end. A message could be sent with the speed of electricity. Before the end of the trip, Morse had drawn up rough plans for an instrument. He called it the electric or magnetic telegraph. Morse began to work out his idea as soon as he landed. He gave up his work as a painter. Instead, he chose to work on his new idea. Almost five years later, his experiments were successful. He built an instrument that made his idea work.