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Samuel Finley Breeze Morse(English) Samuel Finley Breese Morse [mɔːrs]; April 27, Charlestown, Massachusetts - April 2, New York) - American inventor and artist. The most famous inventions are the electromagnetic writing telegraph ("Morse apparatus",) and the Morse code (alphabet).

Biography

During the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States, who supported Napoleon, Morse showed himself to be an ardent patriot. However, in 1813, when Morse presented the painting "The Dying Hercules" to the London Royal Academy of Arts, he was awarded a gold medal.

Upon returning home in 1815, Morse found that Americans considered him English artist and little interest in painting. Therefore, he eked out a meager existence, painting portraits. For ten years he had to lead the life of an itinerant painter. Morse was very sociable and charming, he was eagerly received in the homes of intellectuals, the rich and politicians. In addition, he had a rare gift for making acquaintances. Among his friends were the politician M.-J. Lafayette, novelist J.F. Cooper, and even US President A. Lincoln. In rapidly growing New York, he created some of the most interesting portraits ever made by American artists. In 1825, Morse founded the National Academy of Design in New York, which elected him president and sent him to Europe in 1829 to study the structure of drawing schools and outstanding works of painting.

During the second trip to Europe, Morse met L. Daguerre and became interested latest discoveries in the field of electricity. He was inspired to invent the telegraph by a chance conversation while returning from Europe on a steamboat in 1832. A passenger, in the course of a conversation about a newly invented electromagnet, said: "If an electric current can be made visible at both ends of a wire, then I see no reason why messages cannot be transmitted to them." Although the idea of an electric telegraph was put forward before Morse, he believed that he was the first.

Morse devoted almost all of his time to painting, teaching at New York University, and politics. In 1835 Morse became professor of descriptive arts. But after he was shown a description of the telegraph model proposed by W. Weber in 1833 at the university in 1836, he completely devoted himself to invention.

Years of work and study were required to make his telegraph work. In 1837, together with A. Vail, he developed a system for transmitting letters by dots and dashes, which became known throughout the world as Morse code. He did not find support either at home, or in England, or in France, or in Russia, meeting refusal everywhere. In another attempt to interest the US Congress in the creation of telegraph lines, he acquired a congressman as a partner, and in 1843 Morse received a subsidy of $ 30,000 to build the first telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington. In the course of the work, it turned out that at this distance of about 40 kilometers, the electrical signal was too strongly attenuated and direct communication was impossible. The situation was saved by his companion Alfred Vail, who proposed using the relay as an amplifier. Finally, on May 24, 1844, the line was completed, but Morse was immediately involved in legal feuds with both partners and competitors. He fought desperately, and the Supreme Court in 1854 recognized his copyright in the telegraph.

Newspapers, railroads and banks quickly found use for his telegraph. Telegraph lines instantly entwined the whole world, Morse's fortune and fame multiplied. In 1858 from ten European states Morse received 400,000 francs for his invention. Morse bought an estate in Ponchkif, near New York, and spent the rest of his life there with a large family among children and grandchildren. Morse became a philanthropist in his old age. He patronized schools, universities, churches, bible societies, missionaries and poor artists.

After his death in 1872, Morse's fame as an inventor faded as the telegraph was replaced by telephone, radio and television, but his reputation as an artist grew. He did not consider himself a portrait painter, but many people know his paintings, which depict Lafayette and other prominent people. His 1837 telegraph is kept in National Museum USA, and Vacation home now recognized as a historical monument.

Personal life

On September 29, 1818, Morse married Lucretia Pickering Walker. Three children were born in the marriage. After the death of his first wife, Morse remarried on 10 August 1848 to Elizabeth Griswold. The marriage produced four children.

Memory

Other

On April 27, 2009, in honor of Samuel Morse's birthday, Google changed its home page to include "Google" in Morse code.

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Notes

Literature

Wilson M. American scientists and inventors / Per. from English. V. Ramses; ed. N. Treneva. - M .: Knowledge, 1975. - S. 27-34. - 136 p. - 100,000 copies.

Excerpt characterizing Morse, Samuel

Prince Vasily fulfilled the promise given at the evening at Anna Pavlovna's to Princess Drubetskaya, who asked him about her only son Boris. He was reported to the sovereign, and, unlike others, he was transferred to the guards of the Semenovsky regiment as an ensign. But Boris was never appointed adjutant or under Kutuzov, despite all the troubles and intrigues of Anna Mikhailovna. Shortly after Anna Pavlovna's evening, Anna Mikhailovna returned to Moscow, directly to her wealthy relatives, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed in Moscow and with whom her adored Borenka, who had just been promoted to the army and immediately transferred to the guards ensigns, was brought up and lived for years. The guards had already left Petersburg on August 10, and the son, who had remained in Moscow for uniforms, was supposed to catch up with her on the road to Radzivilov.
The Rostovs had Natalia's birthday girl, mother and younger daughter. In the morning, without ceasing, trains drove up and drove off, bringing congratulators to the large, well-known house of Countess Rostova on Povarskaya, all over Moscow. Countess with a beautiful eldest daughter and the guests, who did not cease to replace one another, sat in the drawing room.
The countess was a woman with an oriental type of thin face, about forty-five years old, apparently exhausted by her children, of whom she had twelve people. The slowness of her movements and speech, which came from the weakness of her strength, gave her a significant air that inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya, like a domestic person, was sitting right there, helping in the matter of receiving and engaging in conversation with the guests. The youth were in the back rooms, not finding it necessary to participate in receiving visits. The count met and saw off the guests, inviting everyone to dinner.
“I am very, very grateful to you, ma chere or mon cher [my dear or my dear] (ma chere or mon cher he spoke to everyone without exception, without the slightest nuance both above and below him to people standing) for himself and for dear birthday girls . Look, come and have dinner. You offend me, mon cher. I sincerely ask you on behalf of the whole family, ma chere. These words, with the same expression on his full, cheerful and clean-shaven face, and with the same firm handshake and repeated short bows, he spoke to everyone without exception or change. After seeing off one guest, the count returned to the one or the other who were still in the drawing room; pulling up chairs and with the air of a man who loves and knows how to live, valiantly spreading his legs and putting his hands on his knees, he swayed significantly, offered guesses about the weather, consulted about health, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in very bad, but self-confident French, and again, with the air of a tired, but firm man in the performance of his duties, he went to see him off, straightening rare White hair on his bald head, and again called for dinner. Sometimes, returning from the hall, he would go through the flower room and the waiter's room into a large marble hall, where a table was laid for eighty couverts, and, looking at the waiters, who wore silver and porcelain, arranged tables and unrolled damask tablecloths, called Dmitry Vasilyevich, a nobleman, to him, engaged in all his affairs, and said: “Well, well, Mitenka, see that everything is fine. So, so, - he said, looking with pleasure at the huge spreading table. - The main thing is serving. That's it ... ”And he left, sighing smugly, again into the living room.
- Marya Lvovna Karagina with her daughter! the huge countess, the outgoing footman, reported in a bass voice as he entered the drawing-room door.
The Countess thought for a moment and sniffed from a golden snuffbox with a portrait of her husband.
“These visits tortured me,” she said. - Well, I'll take her last. Very stiff. Ask, - she said to the footman in a sad voice, as if saying: "well, finish it off!"
A tall, stout, proud-looking lady with a chubby, smiling daughter, rustling her dresses, entered the living room.
“Chere comtesse, il y a si longtemps… elle a ete alitee la pauvre enfant… au bal des Razoumowsky… et la comtesse Apraksine… j"ai ete si heureuse…” [Dear Countess, how long ago… she should have been in bed, poor child ... at the ball at the Razumovskys ... and Countess Apraksina ... was so happy ...] female voices, interrupting one another and merging with the noise of dresses and the movement of chairs. That conversation began, which is started just enough to get up at the first pause, make a noise with dresses, say: “Je suis bien charmee; la sante de maman… et la comtesse Apraksine” [I am in awe; mother's health ... and Countess Apraksina] and, again making a noise of dresses, go into the hall, put on a fur coat or cloak and leave. The conversation turned to the main city news of that time - about the illness of the famous rich man and handsome man of Catherine's time, the old Count Bezukhy, and about his illegitimate son Pierre, who behaved so indecently at the evening at Anna Pavlovna Scherer.
“I am very sorry for the poor count,” said the guest, “his health is already so bad, and now this chagrin from his son, this will kill him!”
- What? the countess asked, as if not knowing what the guest was talking about, although she had already heard the reason for Count Bezukhy's grief fifteen times already.
- That's the current upbringing! While still abroad,” the guest said, “this young man was left to himself, and now in St. Petersburg, they say, he has done such horrors that he was sent out with the police.
- Tell! said the Countess.
“He chose his acquaintances badly,” intervened Princess Anna Mikhailovna. - The son of Prince Vasily, he and one Dolokhov, they say, God knows what they were doing. And both were hurt. Dolokhov was demoted to the soldiers, and Bezukhoy's son was sent to Moscow. Anatol Kuragin - that father somehow hushed up. But they were sent out from St. Petersburg.
“What the hell did they do?” the countess asked.
“These are perfect robbers, especially Dolokhov,” said the guest. - He is the son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a respectable lady, and what? You can imagine: the three of them got a bear somewhere, put it in a carriage with them and took it to the actresses. The police came to take them down. They caught the guard and tied him back to back to the bear and let the bear into the Moika; the bear swims, and the quarter on it.
- Good, ma chere, the figure of the quarterly, - the count shouted, dying with laughter.
- Oh, what a horror! What's there to laugh at, Count?
But the ladies involuntarily laughed themselves.
“They rescued this unfortunate man by force,” continued the guest. - And this is the son of Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov, who is so cleverly amused! she added. - And they said that he was so well educated and smart. That's all the upbringing abroad has brought. I hope that no one will accept him here, despite his wealth. I wanted to introduce him. I resolutely refused: I have daughters.
Why do you say this young man is so rich? asked the countess, bending down from the girls, who immediately pretended not to listen. “He only has illegitimate children. It seems ... and Pierre is illegal.
The guest waved her hand.
“He has twenty illegal ones, I think.
Princess Anna Mikhailovna intervened in the conversation, apparently wishing to show her connections and her knowledge of all secular circumstances.
"Here's the thing," she said significantly, and also in a whisper. - The reputation of Count Kirill Vladimirovich is known ... He lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite.
“How good the old man was,” said the countess, “even last year!” prettier than men I did not see.
“Now he has changed a lot,” said Anna Mikhailovna. “So I wanted to say,” she continued, “by his wife, the direct heir to the entire estate, Prince Vasily, but Pierre was very fond of his father, was engaged in his upbringing and wrote to the sovereign ... so no one knows if he dies (he is so bad that they expect it every minute, and Lorrain came from St. Petersburg), who will get this huge fortune, Pierre or Prince Vasily. Forty thousand souls and millions. I know this very well, because Prince Vasily himself told me this. Yes, and Kirill Vladimirovich is my maternal second cousin. It was he who baptized Borya, ”she added, as if not attributing any significance to this circumstance.

), Massachusetts

Father Jedediah Morse[d]

Samuel Finley Breeze Morse Samuel Finley Breese Morse [ mɔːrs]; April 27, in Massachusetts - April 2, New York) - American inventor and artist. The most famous inventions are the electromagnetic writing telegraph ("Morse apparatus",) and the Morse code (alphabet).

Biography [ | ]

Dying Hercules

Upon his return home in 1815, Morse found that Americans regarded him as an English painter and had little interest in painting. Therefore, he eked out a meager existence, painting portraits. For ten years he had to lead the life of an itinerant painter. Morse was very sociable and charming, he was eagerly received in the homes of intellectuals, the rich and politicians. In addition, he had a rare gift for making acquaintances. Among his friends were the politician M.-J. Lafayette, novelist J.F. Cooper, and even US President A. Lincoln. In rapidly growing New York, he created some of the most interesting portraits ever made by American artists. In 1825, Morse founded the National Academy of Design in New York, which elected him president and sent him to Europe in 1829 to study the structure of drawing schools and outstanding works of painting.

During the second trip to Europe, Morse met L. Daguerre and became interested in the latest discoveries in the field of electricity. He was inspired to invent the telegraph by a chance conversation while returning from Europe on a steamboat in 1832. A passenger, in the course of a conversation about a newly invented electromagnet, said: "If an electric current can be made visible at both ends of a wire, then I see no reason why messages cannot be transmitted to them." Although the idea of an electric telegraph was put forward before Morse, he believed that he was the first.

Morse devoted almost all of his time to painting, teaching at New York University, and politics. In 1835 Morse became professor of descriptive arts. But after being shown a description of the telegraph model proposed by Wilhelm Weber in 1833 at the university in 1836, he devoted himself entirely to invention.

It took Morse years of work and study to make his telegraph work. In September 1837, he finally demonstrated his invention. The signal was sent over a 1,700-foot wire, but the telegram received from the transmitter was unreadable. But Morse was not going to give up, and less than six months later, together with A. Weil, he developed a system for transmitting letters with dots and dashes, which became known throughout the world as the Morse code. On February 8, 1838, in Philadelphia, at , he first publicly demonstrated his electromagnetic telegraph system, which transmitted messages with signals in a special encoding.

But it turned out to be difficult to implement the invention. He did not find support either at home, or in England, or in France, or in Russia, meeting refusal everywhere. In another attempt to interest the US Congress in the creation of telegraph lines, he acquired a congressman as a partner, and in 1843 Morse received a subsidy of $ 30,000 to build the first telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington. In the course of the work, it turned out that at this distance of about 40 kilometers, the electrical signal was too strongly attenuated and direct communication was impossible. The situation was saved by his companion Alfred Vail, who proposed using the relay as an amplifier. Finally, on May 24, 1844, the line was completed, but Morse was immediately involved in legal feuds with both partners and competitors. He fought desperately, and the Supreme Court in 1854 recognized his copyright in the telegraph.

Newspapers, railroads and banks quickly found use for his telegraph. Telegraph lines instantly entwined the whole world, Morse's fortune and fame multiplied. In 1858, Morse received 400,000 francs from ten European states for his invention. Morse bought an estate in Ponchkif, near New York, and spent the rest of his life there with a large family among children and grandchildren. Morse became a philanthropist in his old age. He patronized schools, universities, churches, bible societies, missionaries and poor artists.

After his death in 1872, Morse's fame as an inventor faded as the telegraph was replaced by telephone, radio and television, but his reputation as an artist grew. He did not consider himself a portrait painter, but many people know his paintings, which depict Lafayette and other prominent people. His 1837 telegraph is in the National Museum of the United States, and the country house is now recognized as a historical monument.

Personal life [ | ]

Memory [ | ]

Other [ | ]

On April 27, 2009, in honor of Samuel Morse's birthday, Google changed its home page to include "Google" in Morse code.

Samuel Morse

“Chu ́ days of Your work, O Lord!” - this biblical phrase was pounded out on May 24, 1844 on the apparatus invented by him, the artist Samuel Morse, sitting in Washington in one of the rooms of the Capitol, and at the same minute in Baltimore, 40 kilometers from Washington, his assistant Alfred Vail read it.

Wonderful ́ Your deeds, Lord: the eminent revered artist essentially opened the age of instantaneous transmission of information over a distance.

Samuel Finley Breeze Morse was born April 27, 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of the famous geographer and Calvinist preacher Jedid Morse.

The ability to draw manifested itself in Samuel, or, as he was called in the family, in Finlirano. At the age of fourteen, he enters Yale College, where he earns a living and entertainment by painting miniature portraits of fellow students and teachers. In college, he listens with interest to lectures on electricity, not suspecting how the basic knowledge gained will be useful to him later.

After graduating from college, Finley returns to native city and at the insistence of his parents becomes a clerk in a book publishing house, but continues to draw. His painting "The Arrival of the Pilgrims" attracted the attention of the then famous artist Washington Alston, who persuaded the parents of the young clerk to let his son go to London with him to improve his painting technique.

In London, under the close supervision of Alston, Morse is working enthusiastically. He attends classes at the Royal Academy of Arts, gets acquainted with outstanding artist Benjamin West, who helps him master the secrets of craftsmanship.

One of these secrets was the ability to convey beauty human body, and Morse proved that he had successfully mastered this art, creating first a plaster figurine, and then big picture"Dying Hercules". The statuette was awarded a gold medal at art exhibition in London, and the painting was exhibited at the Academy of Arts and received good feedback criticism.

In 1815, Samuel Morse returned to the United States and opened his own studio in Boston. His life as a professional artist began.

In search of orders, he ended up in the city of Concord, New Hampshire, where he met his betrothed, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a local lawyer, Lucretia Pickering Walker. They became engaged, and two years later, in September 1818, their wedding took place. During their short life together they had four children - two daughters (one of them died in infancy) and two sons.

The fame of the artist Morse gradually grew. He became especially popular in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, where he painted many portraits of the local nobility. The city authorities ordered him a portrait of President James Monroe, and in Washington he persuaded the president to pose for him for at least 10-15 minutes. When the portrait was completed, the president's family was delighted and asked the artist to make a copy, which is now kept in the White House.

In 1822, Morse completed his huge painting The House of Representatives, which depicted more than 80 members of parliament and members of the Supreme Court sitting in the semicircular Rotunda of the Capitol. It is believed that the artist decided to write a picture, seeing the commercial success of the painting by Francois-Marius Granet "Chapella in the Church of the Capuchins in Rome", which traveled around America throughout the 1820s. However, to the disappointment of the author, there were not very many who wanted to see the picture.

An honorable work for the artist Morse was the creation of a portrait of an outstanding figure in the American Revolution, the legendary Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette. In 1825, Lafayette, at the invitation of Congress and President Monroe, came to America, and the city of New York decided to commemorate this event with a portrait of the guest in life size. Several artists expressed a desire to paint the celebrity, but the honor and a fee of a thousand dollars were given to Samuel Morse.

He traveled to Washington, where Lafayette greeted him in a friendly manner. In the three sessions that he managed to allocate to the artist, he managed to paint only the face, after which work with nature was interrupted: Lafayette was expected in many states of the country.

Morse continued to paint a portrait from memory when he was found by a courier with a letter from his father: “My dear son, it is with deep grief that I inform you of a sudden and unexpected death your dear and beloved wife."

Lucretia Morse died of a heart attack on February 7, 1825, a month after the birth of her son James. After receiving the letter, Morse rushed home to New Haven, Connecticut, but did not have time to say goodbye to his wife: she had already been buried. Lafayette sent a heartfelt letter of condolence.

Morse felt tired and broken, but the portrait had to be finished; he moved the canvas from Washington to New York, where Lafayette arrived after a triumphant trip around the country. The artist managed to catch a glimpse of the Marquis only a few times before he left the States for his homeland.

The portrait was exhibited at the newly created National Academy of Drawing, of which Morse was one of the founders and president. The work received mixed reviews from critics, who noted the complete resemblance of the portrait to the original, but saw the portrait as a symbol rather than a living person. Morse did not hide some of the symbolism of his work: the sky in the sunset glow as a reflection of the magnificent evening of Lafayette's life, an empty place on a pedestal next to the busts of Washington and Franklin, intended for the bust of Lafayette himself.

In 1829 Morse left for Europe and stayed there for three years.

During the long ride home on the Sally, he became close to a group of people who were discussing the latest experiments in electromagnetism.Morse listened attentively: he had been interested in this since his days at Yale College. They talked about the instantaneous detection of an electrical impulse at any point of the longest wire. “If this is so, why not transmit information instantly and over any distance with the help of electricity? Morse asked himself.The bitterness from the failed farewell to the late wife due to the late message was still alive in the memory. Already on the ship, he sketched out a diagram of a primitive telegraph system and, leaving the ship, said to the captain: “When one day you hear about such a miracle called “telegraph”, know that it was born on your beautiful ship.”

After the first attempts to create a working telegraph, Morse had already ceased to be so sure of success. He couldn't even make a good electromagnet until someone showed him how to insulate the wire and wrap it neatly around the horseshoe core. Finally, he built a primitive apparatus in which an electromagnet pulled a pencil to a moving tape, marking it with dots and dashes, a code developed by Morse.

But the device only transmitted a signal over a short distance, and Morse went to Princeton, New Jersey, for advice from Professor Joseph Henry. Henry already used the electric telegraph, which he used to connect his house to the laboratory, however, instead of a pencil, he had a bell hanging. A selfless research scientist, he patiently explained to Morse what was wrong with his system and how to transmit a signal to long distances. He introduced Morse to his wonderful invention - an electromagnetic relay, which made it possible to amplify weak signal as it passes through the chain.

Morse received a patent for the electromagnetic telegraph in 1837. And then something began that in modern Russian is denoted by the term “implementation”. Morse demonstrated his apparatus in the cities of America, including the capital. People gasped, amazed at the possibilities of science and technology, but when it came to financial assistance, gasps stopped and sighs began. Morse went to Europe, hoping to get funds there, visited England, France and Russia, but the results were not the best than at home.

Fortunately for Morse, one of the committees of the United States Congress began to discuss the design of a communication line between Washington and Baltimore. Project provided for a semaphore connection: assumed set within sight of the semaphore and transmit information from one to another by the coded position of the semaphore "hands". One such line already existed in the country, it had a lot of shortcomings, did not work at night and in fog, but, for lack of a better one, the committee was close to recommending funding for the construction.

Morse rushed to Washington and with the help of many friends and acquaintances (this is where the fame of a prestigious artist came in handy) began to lobby for his project.

On March 3, 1843, a vote was taken in the House of Representatives. 70 congressmen abstained from voting, saying that they have no idea what it is - an electric telegraph; 89 votes were cast "for" and 83 - "against". That same day, the bill was passed by a narrow majority in the Senate, and President John Tyler signed it that evening. Morse received $30,000 to build the line.

Work has begun on laying the line. They tried to lay wires underground, but their poor insulation forced them to abandon this method. Wires were stretched on poles and trees, using necks as insulators. broken bottles. On May 24, 1844, the laying of the line was completed.

On the morning of that day, Morse was sitting in one of the rooms of the Capitol in front of the telegraph machine. In Baltimore, his assistant Alfred Vail sat in front of the same apparatus. Even earlier, Morse asked Anna Ellsworth, the daughter of the head of the US Patent Office, to pick up a phrase for his first telegraphic message. Anna chose a phrase from the Bible: “Wonderful are Your works, Lord!”("What hath God wrought!"). Having tapped out these words, Samuel Morse heralded the beginning of the telegraph age.

Soon the entire territory of America was covered with a network of telegraph lines. Like many of his inventor predecessors, Morse was forced to go to court to stop the illegal activities of some businessmen who had established the production and sale of telegraph devices of his design. In 1854, after numerous hearings, the Supreme Court recognized Morse as the sole inventor of the system, which received Spread in America.

In 1861, eight years before the construction of the transcontinental railroad, a telegraph line connected the two ocean coasts of the country. And even before that, in 1856, the idea arose to connect America and Europe by telegraph, laying a cable along the bottom Atlantic Ocean. The American businessman Cyrus Field, not a very technically savvy person, but a brilliant and purposeful organizer, took up the matter. As technical specialists, he took as assistants Morse and the English scientist and inventor William Thomson, the future Lord Kelvin, the author temperature scale bearing his name.

Only ten years later, in 1866, after several failed attempts the line was successfully laid, several more were soon laid, and since then the telegraph connection across the Atlantic has steadily earned.

Morse was at the height of his fame. He lived on his estate, Locus Grave, and at his side was his beloved Sarah, his second wife, with whom they had been together since 1848. Morse met Sarah Elizabeth Griswold, the daughter of an army officer, at the wedding of his son Charles and married her two months later. This marriage caused a lot of gossip: Sarah was thirty years younger than Morse and deaf from infancy. Nevertheless, Morse was happy with her, evidence of which was the birth of their four children in love.

Samuel Finley Breeze Morse died on April 2, 1872, 25 days before the age of 81. And a year before his death, on June 10, 1871, a statue of Morse was erected in New York's Central Park in recognition of Morse's merits.

Sculptor Byron Pickett put the inventor on a pedestal, on which capital letters one word is written: "MORSE". His left hand rests on a telegraph machine, and in his right he holds a ribbon with dots and dashes - Morse code.

Speaking at the opening of the monument, the outstanding American poet William Cullen Bryant, whose portrait was once painted by the artist Morse, said that, by and large, this sculpture is not so necessary, because the entire globe has become a monument for Morse.

Name Samuel Morse everyone is familiar with his most famous discovery - the famous alphabet, named after the inventor. However, few people know that Morse was also an artist, moreover, the founder and president of the National Academy of Drawing in New York. However, about aesthetic value of his work, art historians expressed very conflicting opinions, just as scientists - about the significance of his inventions. Who was he really - an artist, an inventor or a talented adventurer?

Samuel Finley Breeze Morse was born in America, the son of a preacher. Samuel created his first serious work at the age of 14 - he then painted a successful family portrait, and a little later - the painting "The Landing of the Pilgrims" about the arrival of the first settlers in America. This canvas attracted the attention of the then-famous artist V. Alston, who invited the young man to go with him to England to study painting. Samuel's parents did not approve of these activities, but the trip was not interfered with. And in 1811, at the age of 20, Samuel Morse began to study painting at the Royal Academy.

While studying at the Morse Academy, he created two significant works - "The Dying Hercules" (for which the artist received gold medal on display) and Judgment of Jupiter. At 24, the young man returned to America famous artist However, no one bought his paintings in his homeland, and he began to paint portraits to order. Among them was a portrait of former US President John Adams, as well as portraits of the Marquis de Lafayette and the fifth US President James Monroe.

In New York, Morse founded the National Academy of Drawing and became its president. At the same time, he decided to improve his skills and continued his studies in Europe. His painting classes were so diligent that no one could have imagined that he would soon take up a radically different kind of activity. Morse later admitted: “I devoted my younger years to painting only. But, as it turned out, I could not forget the phrase that struck me in my youth, heard at a lecture on natural sciences: "If an electric current meets a delay on its way, it will become visible." This thought was the first seed from which, many years later, the invention of the telegraph grew in my head.

There were several inventors of the telegraph, and Morse was not a pioneer: Schilling was the creator of a new type of communication in Russia, Gauss and Weber in Germany, Cook and Wheatstone in England. But their electromagnetic devices were of the pointer type, and Morse invented the electromechanical telegraph. He received a patent for his invention and demonstrated its work at New York University. However, pundits not only did not appreciate his find, but also called Morse an adventurer: the fact is that he essentially did not invent anything, but simply combined several successfully operating inventions of his predecessors. But Morse himself was convinced that the competent application of the existing is no less important than the introduction of something new.

The revolutionary invention of Morse was not due to data transmission technology, but to the method of fixing them and the scope. At the same time, Morse did not understand not only the latest discoveries in the field of electricity, but even his basic rules and laws. He had neither special knowledge nor training, but they were replaced by perseverance and determination.

Telegraphs with magnetic needles existed before Morse, but they were inconvenient to use. And he decided to replace the arrow with a recorder, fixing the received message on a paper tape pulled through the apparatus. Significant assistance in the invention was provided by Alfred Weil, who, unlike Morse, had a technical education: he invented a scheme for printing a telegraph apparatus and improved the telegraph code. The result was the famous Morse code, which is a combination of short and long signals, fixed on a paper tape in the form of dots and dashes.

Fame, wealth and recognition came to him only in his declining years. The scientific and practical value of his invention had to be recognized by many, even those who insisted on the secondary nature of these discoveries. After Morse's death in 1872, his fame as an inventor faded, but he was again talked about as an original portrait painter. These disputes continue to this day.

And for some scientists, their discoveries were fatal:

Samuel Finley Breeze Morse was born on April 27, 1791 in the family of the famous local preacher Jedid Morse in the American town of Charlestown (Massachusetts). In 1805 he entered Yale University.

In 1811, Samuel went to Europe to study painting with Washington Alston. The young man filed great expectations like an artist. In 1813, he submitted to the London Royal Academy of Arts the painting "The Dying Hercules", which was awarded a gold medal. In 1815 he returned to his homeland. A few years later, Samuel was recognized as the leader and idol of the young American artists(his brush belongs to famous portrait President Munro). In 1825, he founded a society of painters in New York (later the National Academy of Drawing) and became its president, and in 1829 he again went to Europe to study the structure of drawing schools and outstanding works of painting.

On October 1, 1832, the sailing ship "Sally" (the captain of the ship - Pell) left Le Havre for New York. The famous doctor of those times (the discoverer of anesthesia and new methods of pain relief in medicine) - Charles T. Jackson in the first class cabin demonstrated a focus experience to its passengers: the compass needle began to rotate when a piece of wire connected to it was brought to it. galvanic cell. Samuel watched the experiment closely.

In Europe, at that time, the book of M. Faraday was published and the experiments given in it were repeated in many laboratories, and in early 1832 St. Petersburg witnessed the first experiments of Schilling. "Extracting sparks from a magnet" seemed a miracle to the uninitiated. The experience he saw prompted him to think about creating a system for transmitting signals over wires, using combinations of transmission of "sparks". This idea captured him. During the month-long voyage home, Morse sketched several drawings. The next three years, working in the attic in the house of his brother Richard, he devoted to the construction of the apparatus according to his drawings, but to no avail. In 1835 he was appointed professor of painting at the newly opened New York University, where in September 1837 he demonstrated his invention. The signal was sent over a 1,700-foot wire.

A prominent American industrialist Steve Weil became interested in the work of Morse and agreed to donate 2 thousand dollars and provide premises for further experiments on one condition - S. Morse would take his son Alfred as an assistant. The union of the younger Weil and Morse proved to be fruitful. The first message was sent on May 27, 1844, and the text of which read: "Wonderful are thy works, Lord!" For the transmission of parcels, a key invented by the Russian scientist B.S. Yakobi was used, and for reception, an electromagnet was used, the anchor of which controlled the movement of the ink pen across the paper.

Working on the further improvement of his telegraph apparatus, Samuel Morse in 1838 also invented a code - the telegraph alphabet. Note: The telegraphic alphabet (a system for encoding characters in short and long parcels for transmitting them over communication lines, known as "Morse code" or "Morse code"), which is used now, differs significantly from the one invented in 1838 by S. Morse, although some researchers believe that its author was Alfred Weil, Samuel Morse's business partner.

It should be noted that the original table of the "Morse code" was strikingly different from those codes that sound today on amateur bands. In it, firstly, parcels of three different durations were used (dot, dash and em dash). Secondly, some characters had pauses within their codes. The encodings of the modern and original tables match only for about half of the letters (A, B, D, E, G, H, I, K, M, N, S, T, U, V, and W) and do not match for any of the digits. Moreover, to construct a code for a number of characters in the original Morse Code, other principles were generally used. So, along with "dots" and "dashes", there were combinations of "double dash" (letter L) and even "triple dash" (number 0), and some characters included a pause .... latin letter C, for example, was then transmitted as "two dots-pause-dot", i.e., essentially, as the letters I and E transmitted one after the other. This significantly complicates the reception of radiograms. That is why various versions of the telegraph alphabet soon appeared, which did not contain codes with pauses between parcels (Phillips, Baln, "sea", "continental" ...).

The modern version of the international "Morse code" (International Morse) appeared quite recently - in 1939, when the last adjustment was made (the so-called "continental" version), which mainly affected punctuation marks. It sounds even more incredible, but the fact is that the original version of the "Morse code" was used in some places on railways until the mid-1960s!

In 1851, the German "Commission for the Construction of the Telegraph" appreciated the advantages of the "Morse apparatus", and since then it has found its wide application.

In recent years, S. Morse lived in Ponchkif (near New York) and died on April 2, 1872 in wealth and honor.

According to the site www.qso.ru

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