“. . . _ _ _ . . .” is the Morse code for distress, one of the most globally recognizable signals. Would you believe that its inventor’s former career was as a portrait painter? Would you also believe that same former artist was also responsible for making it possible to communicate across oceans?
Samuel Morse spent the first half of his life as an artist, painting the portraits of many famous people including American presidents John Adams and James Monroe and inventor Eli Whitney. An early interest in electricity was reignited when he was shown an electromagnet and what it could do.
Morse then turned his attention and efforts to inventing a single-wire telegraph system that could transmit electrical signals over long distances. He had a lot of help, but his name would be the one on the patents.
With the help of Alfred Vail, Morse devised the code we know today as ‘Morse code.’ Adopted worldwide for telegraphic communication, it was also used when radio communication was developed.
Within fifteen years of Morse’s first long-distance demonstration of his telegraph, a wire would be laid across the Atlantic ocean and messages would be able to zip between America and England. The 19th century version of instant messaging was born!
