Morse, Samuel Finley Breese definition of Morse, Samuel Finley Breese in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, 1791–1872, American inventor and artist, b. Charlestown, Mass., grad. Yale, 1810. He studied painting in England under Washington Allston Allston, Washington (ôl`stən), 1779–1843, American painter and author, b. Georgetown co., S.C.
..... Click the link for more information. and achieved some success. He returned to the United States in 1815, took up portrait painting, and gained a considerable reputation in this field. Associated with the Hudson River school, Hudson River school, group of American landscape painters, working from 1825 to 1875. The 19th-century romantic movements of England, Germany, and France were introduced to the United States by such writers as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper.
..... Click the link for more information. he also executed a number of landscapes and, less successfully, various historical works. A founder (1825) of the National Academy of Design, he spent the years from 1829 to 1832 in further European study and upon his return became a professor of fine arts at New York Univ.

Morse's interest in electricity, aroused in his college days, was further stimulated by the lectures of James F. Dana in 1827 and later by contacts with university faculty. Learning in 1832 of Ampère's idea for the electric telegraph, Morse worked for the next 12 years, with the aid of the chemist Leonard Gale, physicist Joseph Henry, Henry, Joseph, 1797–1878, American physicist, b. Albany, N.Y., educated at Albany Academy. He taught (1826–32) mathematics and natural philosophy at Albany Academy and was professor of natural philosophy (1832–46) at Princeton (then the College of
..... Click the link for more information. , and machinist Alfred Vail to perfect his own version of the instrument. So many phases of the telegraph, however, had already been anticipated by other inventors, especially in Great Britain, Germany, and France, that Morse's originality as the inventor of telegraphy has been questioned; even the Morse code Morse code [for S. F. B. Morse ], the arbitrary set of signals used on the telegraph (see code ). It may also be used with a flash lamp for visible signaling . The international (or continental) Morse code is a simplified form generally used in radio telegraphy.
..... Click the link for more information. did not differ greatly from earlier codes, including the semaphore. In any case, in 1844 Morse demonstrated to Congress the practicability of his instrument by transmitting the famous message "What hath God wrought" over a wire from Washington to Baltimore. Morse subsequently was compelled to defend his invention in court, although by then he commanded the acclaim of the world. He later experimented with submarine cable telegraphy. Both Morse and John Draper Henry Draper, 1837–82, was a physician by vocation, but he made major contributions in the field of astronomical photography and spectroscopy. He was the first to photograph stellar spectral lines.

Bibliography

See biography by G. F.
..... Click the link for more information. were instrumental in introducing the daguerreotype in the United States.

Bibliography

See his letters and journals, ed. by E. L. Morse (1914, repr. 1973); biographies by C. Mabee (1943, repr. 1969), P. Staiti (1989), and K. Silverman (2003).