AGENTS OF COMMUNICATION
Communication is one of man's primal needs.There was indeed a time when no formula of language existed, when men communicated with each other by means of gestures, grimaces, guttural sounds, or rude images of things seen; but it is impossible to conceive of a time when men had no means of communication at all.And at last, after long ages, men evolved in sound the names of the things they knew and the forms of speech; ages later, the alphabet and the art of writing; ages later still, those wonderful instruments of extension for the written and spoken word: the telegraph, the telephone, the modern printing press, the phonograph, the typewriter, and the camera.
The word "telegraph" is derived from Greek and means "to write far"; so it is a very exact word, for to write far is precisely what we do when we send a telegram.The word today, used as a noun, denotes the system of wires with stations and operators and messengers, girdling the earth and reaching into every civilized community, whereby news is carried swiftly by electricity.But the word was coined long before it was discovered that intelligence could be communicated by electricity.It denoted at first a system of semaphores, or tall poles with movable arms, and other signaling apparatus, set within sight of one another.
There was such a telegraph line between Dover and London at the time of Waterloo; and this telegraph began relating the news of the battle, which had come to Dover by ship, to anxious London, when a fog set in and the Londoners had to wait until a courier on horseback arrived.And, in the very years when the real telegraph was coming into being, the United States Government, without a thought of electricity, was considering the advisability of setting up such a system of telegraphs in the United States.
The telegraph is one of America's gifts to the world.The honor for this invention falls to Samuel Finley Breese Morse, a New Englander of old Puritan stock.Nor is the glory that belongs to Morse in any way dimmed by the fact that he made use of the discoveries of other men who had been trying to unlock the secrets of electricity ever since Franklin's experiments.If Morse discovered no new principle, he is nevertheless the man of all the workers in electricity between his own day and Franklin's whom the world most delights to honor; and rightly so, for it is to such as Morse that the world is most indebted.Others knew;Morse saw and acted.Others had found out the facts, but Morse was the first to perceive the practical significance of those facts; the first to take steps to make them of service to his fellows; the first man of them all with the pluck and persistence to remain steadfast to his great design, through twelve long years of toil and privation, until his countrymen accepted his work and found it well done.
Morse was happy in his birth and early training.He was born in 1791, at Charlestown, Massachusetts.His father was a Congregational minister and a scholar of high standing, who, by careful management, was able to send his three sons to Yale College.Thither went young Samuel (or Finley, as he was called by his family) at the age of fourteen and came under the influence of Benjamin Silliman, Professor of Chemistry, and of Jeremiah Day, Professor of Natural Philosophy, afterwards President of Yale College, whose teaching gave him impulses which in later years led to the invention of the telegraph."Mr.Day's lectures are very interesting," the young student wrote home in 1809; "they are upon electricity; he has given us some very fine experiments, the whole class taking hold of hands form the circuit of communication and we all receive the shock apparently at the same moment." Electricity, however, was only an alluring study.It afforded no means of livelihood, and Morse had gifts as an artist; in fact, he earned a part of his college expenses painting miniatures at five dollars apiece.He decided, therefore, that art should be his vocation.
A letter written years afterwards by Joseph M.Dulles of Philadelphia, who was at New Haven preparing for Yale when Morse was in his senior year, is worth reading here:
"I first became acquainted with him at New Haven, when about to graduate with the class of 1810, and had such an association as a boy preparing for college might have with a senior who was just finishing his course.Having come to New Haven under the care of Rev.Jedidiah Morse, the venerable father of the three Morses, all distinguished men, I was commended to the protection of Finley, as he was then commonly designated, and therefore saw him frequently during the brief period we were together.The father Iregard as the gravest man I ever knew.He was a fine exemplar of the gentler type of the Puritan, courteous in manner, but stern in conduct and in aspect.He was a man of conflict, and a leader in the theological contests in New England in the early part of this century.Finley, on the contrary, bore the expression of gentleness entirely.In person rather above the ordinary height, well formed, graceful in demeanor, with a complexion, if Iremember right, slightly ruddy, features duly proportioned, and often lightened with a genial and expressive smile.He was, altogether, a handsome young man, with manners unusually bland.
It is needless to add that with intelligence, high culture, and general information, and with a strong bent to the fine arts, Mr.
Morse was in 1810 an attractive young man.During the last year of his college life he occupied his leisure hours, with a view to his self-support, in taking the likenesses of his fellow-students on ivory, and no doubt with success, as he obtained afterward a very respectable rank as a portrait-painter.Many pieces of his skill were afterward executed in Charleston, South Carolina."** Prime, "The Life of Samuel F.B.Morse, LL.D.", p.26.
