Early Life | Samuel Morse (1791-1872)
“At the age of four Samuel was sent to an infant school kept by an old lady, who being lame, was unable to leave her chair, but carried her authority to the remotest parts of her dominion by the help of a long rattan. Samuel, like the rest, had felt the sudden apparition of this monitor. Having scratched a portrait of the dame upon a chest of drawers with the point of a pin, he was called out and summarily punished. Years later, when he became notable, the drawers were treasured by one of his admirers. He entered a preparatory school at Andover, Mass., when he was seven years old, and showed himself an eager pupil. Among other books, he was delighted with Plutarch's Lives and at thirteen he composed a biography of Demosthenes, long preserved by his family. A year later he entered Yale College as a freshman.
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t is not evident that Morse had any distinct idea of the electric telegraph in these days ; but amidst his lessons in literature and philosophy he took a special interest in the sciences of electricity and chemistry. He became acquainted with the voltaic battery through the lectures of his friend, Professor Sieliman; and we are told that during one of his vacations at Yale he made a series of electrical experiments with Dr. Dwight. Some years later he resumed these studies under his friend Professor James Freeman Dana, of the University of New York, who exhibited the electro-magnet to his class in 1827, and also under Professor Renwick, of Columbia College. Art seems to have had an equal if not a greater charm than science for Morse at this period. A boy of fifteen, he made a watercolor sketch of his family sitting round the table ; and while a student at Yale he relieved his father, who was far from rich, of a part of his education by painting miniatures on ivory and selling them to his companions at five dollars a-piece. Before he was nineteen, he completed a painting of the * Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth,' which formerly hung in the office of the Mayor, at Charlestown, Massachusetts.”
Excerpted from Heroes of the Telegraph by J. Munro, publication date 1891, digitized by Google, Public Domain USA . Online at archive.org
Samuel Morse with His Recorder by Mathew Brad, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs. He was a co-developer of Morse code and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.
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