Samuel F. B. Morse
Caricaturist
The Last Inventor |
It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph or a steam engine or a phonograph or a photograph or a telephone or any other important thing - and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others.
|
Well, it may not have been a thousand men (or women) but the cognoscenti know a lot of people had been thinking of sending messages over electrical wires ever since Alessandro Volta invented the first electrical circuit. Early on some devices were invented that more or less worked, sort of.
But as far as making the first really practical and useful device for communicating long distances and that stood the test of time, then we pretty much have to give the nod to Samuel Finley Breese Morse.
To bad he was such a jerk.
Ha? (To quote Shakespeare.) Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor extraordinaire, was a jerk?
Yes, Samuel F. B. Morse, the iconic 
inventor, was a jerk.
Actually being a jerk didn't hurt him or his reputation, and he became one of the most celebrated men in 
. But just because most people don't remember Sam was jerk, that does't mean that Sam wasn't a jerk.
But first a bit about Samuel. F. B. Morse, the Artist.
Samuel the Great Artiste
Samuel was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1791. Yes, that's when George Washington was still the President of the United States. His dad, Jedidiah, was a Calvinist preacher who instilled into Sam the morals and philosophy of that austere doctrine.
Sam's dad, though, was not just an uneducated spittle-flinging firebrand preacher. He had been a teacher and a geographer and had a number of published books to his credit.
The Reverend Jedidiah also wrote pamphlets defending and explaining Calvinism while at the same time trashing the (ptui) "liberal" religion of Unitarianism. Unitarianism caused a lot of concern to people like Jedidiah who didn't think people should be allowed to believe what they want without fear of eternal pain and torment.
Jedidiah's doctrine has remained popular with many of the faithful, and recently the Attorney General of a State We Will Not Name stripped Unitarian Universalism of its status as a recognized religion - and that included removing its tax-exemptions. The prohibition lasted a couple of weeks until the Honorable Attorney General realized that the ruling was making the state's politicians look like a bunch of ignorant and intolerant yahoos.
Sam, though, wasn't interested in following in his dad's footsteps in Preaching the Word and writing books about geography. He wanted to be an artist. And at the time that wasn't really a bad job. In those days if you wanted a picture of yourself, friends, or family, you had to go to a portrait painter. So there was a real need for skilled artists.
Sam entered Yale in 1805. Although he still wanted to be an artist (and Yale today is the nation's top art school) Sam also liked the classes about physics and chemistry. Both fields were starting to include the new fangled discipline of electricity.
At Yale, Sam actually began picking up a bit of dough from his art. He began drawing caricatures of his friends - yes, Samuel F. B. Morse was a caricaturist - but he then found that people would actually pay him $1 for a watercolor profile and $5 for a small portrait on ivory. That wasn't bad money for the time.
But at that time to become a serious artist, you had to study in Europe. So Sam spent the years from 1809 to 1811 honing his skills to where he could get Gilbert Stuart, the premier American portrait painter, to sponsor him for studies in England. Sam arrived in London in August 1811.
Sam began his serious study with Benjamin West, perhaps America's most famous American artist who, like most of the other famous American artists, spent the American Revolution living in England. Of course, that unpleasant time was in the past.
But there was another unpleasant time just beginning. Since 1807 American and British foreign relations had pretty much been heading into the dumper. The British had been intercepting American ships and impressing the sailors into the Royal Navy. Of course, America didn't help things since they kept trying to invade Canada. In 1812, less than a year after Sam hit London, America declared war on England.
Oddly enough, being an enemy alien didn't interfere with Sam's studies and he remained in England until August 1815. So he wasn't in America when Andy Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans, an engagement honored in story and song as the most famous battle of the war fought after the war had ended.
In 1818 and back home, Sam married Lucretia Walker in Concord, New Hampshire. Although it was true that good portrait painters were in demand, it was also true that in any given locale, there was relatively little demand for portraits.
So Sam's avocation required a lot of traveling. From 1818 to 1821 he spent considerable time in Charleston, South Carolina, although his home base remained in New Haven, Connecticut where his folks had moved.
But Sam liked the South. He found commissions in Virginia and in Washington, D. C. It was in D. C. in 1826 that he completed a full-length portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette. The Marquis was 75 years old, and Sam didn't care for the painting although he did say it was good likeness.
Today science and art are two separate subjects and sometimes it seems that ne'er do they meet. Not so in Sam's time. The science of optics was making major developments, and high quality lenses could be manufactured. Artists were quick to take an interest in how this emerging technology could help them in their craft.
Today there's quite a bit of controversy how much artists "cheated" by using the camera obscura. Originally the pinhole camera that projected an image (upside down) onto a screen, the later models used lenses to produce a clearer image. In principle, you could trace the image onto a sheet of paper and so make an exact drawing or painting.
But some people doubt that artists used these contraptions very much. After all, a camera obscura is 1) cumbersome, 2) unnecessary, and 3) there is little documentation that artists really used them.
However, Sam's letters help us understand that yes, 1) the camera obscura was cumbersome, and 2) it was unnecessary, but 3) there is documentation that at least some artists used them. And one of those artists was Sam.
In 1821 Sam was commissioned to paint the members of the US House of Representatives in the House Chamber. But he was having some trouble getting the architecture down. So he wrote to Lucretia to send him his camera obscura that he had left in Boston. So we see that Sam did have and use the device. But he couldn't have used it that much or he wouldn't have left it at home.
The point is the camera obscura or it's more convenient cousin the camera lucida are not of much use except for a trained artist. The two cameras are also best for blocking out the compositions. This doesn't mean that in skilled hands you can't include details. In the 1830's and 1840's the American artist Frederick Catherwood used a lucida to make accurate drawings of the ruins of the Ancient Mexican and South American civilizations. But he still knew how to draw.
High Tech Art
Sam and some of his buddies also tried to get Congress to commission paintings suitable for decorating the inside of the Capital dome. It would be a big deal, both for the fame of the artists and the money provided. In 1836, Congress finally approved the dough, but Sam - to his surprise - was left out in the cold.
So Sam left for a short trip to Europe. That's where he met Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. He saw that photography was an enrichment, not a detriment to art. Back home he began experimenting with the process. Unfortunately, there is only one signed daguerreotype that we definitely ascribe to Sam.
Sam had been appointed to a professorship of art at New York University in 1834. It was a mixed blessing. He had a fancy pants-title and people called him "Professor". But the professorship carried no salary. So with Sam spending considerable time as a teacher but getting paid nothing, it's no surprise that by 1840, he was - as one student said - "very poor". He even began advising young people not to venture into art. "It means beggary", he said. "A house-dog lives better."
The BIG Invention
And we have to admit it. Although Sam was an excellent artist, he wasn't a great artist. So it's not surprising that he decided to look for other ways to make a buck.
But just what prompted a painter to invent a device that produced near instantaneous communication that revolutionized the world? It seems that Sam was in Washington, working on the painting of Layette, when he received a note from his dad. On January 17, 1825, Sam's wife, Lucretia, had given birth to a son. At first she seemed fine. But a few days later she suddenly died, possibly of a heart attack.
Because of the slow communication, Sam was not able to reach New Haven before the funeral. So he vowed to create a device that would allow people to receive messages instantly. At least so the story goes.
On his trip to Europe, Sam had met some passengers with scientific training. They spoke of electricity and how it traveled rapidly down wires. That, Sam thought, was the answer.
Sam's duties as professor at New York University were flexible - after all, if you don't get paid you feel you can do what you like. So he began lecturing on electricity and so officially became an expert.
And even though Sam hadn't gotten rich as a painter, he had made a lot of contacts with the Washington bigwigs. He began trying to get Congress to give him the cash to demonstrate he could send an instantaneous message from Washington to Baltimore. After some skepticism, Congress said go ahead.
By now all sorts of ideas had been floated out for sending electrical messages. The key - no pun intended - was to get a device that was simple but most of all was reliable.
The first - quote - "functional working telegraph" - unquote - is usually credited to Sir Francis Ronalds in 1816. But it wasn't very practical, simple, or useful.
Part of the problem with Sir Francis's telegraph was it used static electricity which discharged at a certain rate to indicate specific letters. This limited the telegraph's range, and the performance was also affected by environmental factors such as temperature and humidity. Soon everyone realized that the steady direct current generated by a battery would be more reliable.
The first true commercial telegraph was based on the fact that if you sent a current through a wire you could make a compass needle move. If you labeled the needles with letters of the alphabet, you could spell out words depending on which of the needles moved. All you needed was 26 wires running next to 26 needles.
Obviously this method was slow and the equipment cumbersome. After all, 26 wires isn't something you'd easily string from Washington to Baltimore, much less from New York to San Francisco. But a lot of people thought these "needle telegraphs" were the way to go. They just had to reduce the number of wires and needles.
By redesigning the circuits and the display, William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone (yes, of "Wheatstone Bridge" fame) reduced the number of wires and needles to five. This was in 1837. William and Charles's device worked by having more than one needle indicating the letter (kind of like finding a location by triangulation on a map). William and Charles's system became the first commercial telegraph and was installed on the Great Western Railroad in England. It proved its value when an operator sent a message that helped nab a crook.
But even five wires were too many for reliability. Eventually there was a two needle system and finally even single wire telegraphs. Some of these systems kept operating well into the twentieth century.
But the simplification of the circuitry did not really change the fact that the telegraphs were still slow and inconvenient. You had to sit and stare at the display and read off the letters as the message came in. There had to be a better way.
Sam's Better Way
Sam decided you needed a device to 1) send the message in code and 2) automatically record the message. His idea was to set up an electromagnet - a metal bar wrapped with coils of an insulated wire - which would then operate a stylus. When the current flowed, the electromagnet would pull the stylus down onto a strip of moving paper. The stylus would then emboss the strip with a series of marks - short dots or longer dashes. Once recorded on the paper strip, the code would then be read off the paper and transcribed into a normal message.
Of course, such a system required men (and they were mostly men) who could tap out the coded messages quickly. But because they knew the codes so well, the telegraphers could understand the messages by the sound of the embosser. When the needle came down it made a click and when it was released it made another but softer click. So if there was a short space between the two clicks, that was a dot. A longer space between clicks was a dash. The telegrapher would simply listen and write down the letters in English as the message clicked through.
Eventually the embossers were placed on the shelves and a sound box substituted which produced clearer clicks. Forty words a minute was a good rate for a telegrapher.
The problem was making an electromagnet that would work if the wires ran from one town to another and through all kinds of weather. The wires might corrode, the insulators might not insulate, and interferences of other electric phenomenon could garble the messages. So Sam's invention was to make an electromagnet function at a long distance.
Despite the demands, Sam's telegraph was basically simple:
Even sending the current for many miles could be done using a battery. Not a small battery, mind you, but one made up by a number of individual "cells" hooked up in series. More voltage could be produced by hooking up more cells.
The type of battery needed already existed in Sam's time. Called a Grove battery, it was simple enough that it could be constructed and maintained by the operators. Grove batteries did have drawbacks. Not only did they produce a large voltage which could give a person a nasty shock, but they also generated nitric oxides which produce nitric acid when inhaled. For these reasons the batteries were put in separate rooms from the telegraph itself.
Ultimately Sam and his partner, Alfred Vail, strung the wires between Washington and Baltimore. As the bigwigs gathered around, Sam sitting in Washington tapped out to Alfred in Baltimore the famous message, "What hath God wrought?"
With the invention of the telegraph, Sam became rich and famous and lived until he was 80. Alfred became middle class and forgotten and died aged 51.
Warning!!!!! The next sections have a high nerd content and may wish to be avoided by those with nerd-o-phobia. To skip these nerdish sections just click here.
How The Sucker Works: A Circuit Sans Circuit.
The actual telegraphs that were around for over a century had a little known feature. They used an electric circuit that wasn't a circuit.
You'll remember the basic telegraph design was:
Now if you've ever studied electric circuits, you'll know that this can be written another way:
The textbook authors hasten to point out that the "grounds" - the triangles at the end of the wired - are not to be taken literally. They simply indicate that the wires are connected to the common point of lowest voltage. Which in this circuit is the negative electrode of the battery. The two diagrams above are completely identical.
That is:
=
But to further confuse the student, the textbooks also state that sometimes the ground symbols do indeed indicate where the wires really are run into the ground - that is the Earth. And that was all you needed for a telegraph.
That is, you can cut out the return wire. You only had to run one wire from one town to the other. Then you could just stick the ends of the wires into the ground. When you pressed the key in Washington, the clicker still clicked in Baltimore.
The advantage was obvious. Without having to make an actual circuit, you could reduced the amount of wire needed by half. That was quite a savings.
But how, they asked, did such a circuit work?
Since the true carrier of current - the electron - wasn't discovered until 1897, the thinking was still that there was an "electrical fluid" that had to go around in a circuit. So the electric theorists figured that the Earth itself was acting as a return for the current. But that really seemed strange. How come the returning "fluid" didn't get confused with the "Earth return" of other telegraph lines? How did the current move so fast?
Even today if you ask the question, you'll get a multitude of answers. Some will say that yes, the Earth does complete the circuit. The reason it works is that from Washington to Baltimore there are an almost unlimited number of paths through the ground. So this made the return of the current no problem as there is essentially no resistance.
But that answer still perplexes many students. They understand that it might work if the ground is wet - water improves conductivity. But suppose the ground is dry. How could the current travel?
Well, in that case the teacher points out the actual grounding is done by burying a large copper plate in the ground and attaching the wires to the plate. The plate then reaches the levels where the ground will always be moist. This, too, is not the most satisfying answer since it still doesn't address the question of interference from other grounded electric devices.
The most convincing (and correct) answer is that it just isn't true that you need a physical loop to have a current flow through a wire. You simply need one end of the wire to be connected to a point of higher electric potential compared to the other end. As long as the wire connects a potential difference, the current will flow.
The point of highest potential in the - quote - "circuit" - unquote - is the positive terminal of the battery. Due to a mistake by Benjamin Franklin (of which we will skip for now), the direction of current is actually the opposite of the way the electrons flow. And because the electrons flow toward the positive terminal, the current of a completed circuit is away from the positive terminal.
If there is a break in the circuit - the switch is open - excess electrons accumulate at the positive terminal creating an "electrical pressure" that will be relieved if the switch is closed. That is, we say there is a "higher potential" for current to flow from the postive terminal to a lower potential.
If these last paragraphs seems confusing, as an American president once said, "Trust me."
OK. The positive terminal has the highest electrical potential in the circuit and the current wants to move to a lower potential. Just where is the lowest potential?
Well, if there is a true circuit - a wire and a return wire - obviously the negative terminal of the battery has a lower potential than the positive. That's why a current will flow through a true electrical circuit.
But if you're after the absolute lowest potential possible, that happens to be the Earth.
In fact, that's why lighting rods work. A lightning bolt will hit the rod and send the electricity through the rod and down the wire to the ground without going through the building. The current flows without any real circuit.
So in the single-wire telegraph transmitter, the Earth is not acting as a return for the circuit but as a "sink" for the current. The negative terminal of the battery in Washington is attached to the Earth. So the negative terminal then has the same potential as the Earth - essentially zero. Current wants to flow from the positive terminal, then through the wire, and finally to the Earth.
But because of the way batteries are constructed, the current can't flow backwards. So the high potential of the postive terminal can't discharge by traveling back through the battery to the Earth. The current has to find some other way to move.
But remember that the wire in Baltimore is also attached to the Earth - which has the same potential as the Earth in Washington. So if you close the switch - that is press the telegraph key - the higher potential of the positive battery terminal in Washington becomes connected to the lower potential of the ground in Baltimore. So the current flows through the wire and turns the iron rod into a magnet. The magnet closes the clicker, and you get a click.
The TRUTH: Why the Earth has Zero Potential
But why, you ask, does the Earth have such a low potential? We'd really like to know that.
I thought you would as Captain Mephisto said to Sydney Brand. It's very simple really.
The fundamental law of electricity is Coulomb's Law. That says the force between two charged particles is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance. Or as written:
Force in newtons = 9 × 109 q1q2/r2
where q1 and q2 are the charges on the two particles and are in coulombs. The distance between the two particles is r which is in meters.
With these variables and dimensions the constant, 9 × 109 is in newtons-meter2-coulomb-2. If both charges are of the same sign - both positive or both negative - then the particles push away from each other. Otherwise the force pulls the particles together.
So if you have two particles of 1 coulomb charge each - both positive or both negative - and they are separated by 1 meter, then the force pushing the particles away from each other is equal to 9,000,000,000 newtons. Since there are 4.445 newtons in 1 pound of force, that means they repel each other a bit more than
2 Billion Pounds!
So a coulomb is a lot of charge.
Another way to look at the force is to take a minuscule amount of carbon - 5.25 nanograms. That's a bit less than 0.0000000002 ounce. Now take the electrons from the carbon atoms and divide them between the surfaces of two soccer balls. The electrons will spread out evenly.
Now move the balls to where the nearest points of the two surfaces are separated by one yard. Using Coulomb's Law we then calculate:
Force: 100 Pounds
And what we find is that the force of repulsion between the two soccer balls is 100 pounds.
Which leads us to another topic of electricity.
Finding the Field
The question naturally arises as what causes the force between the two particles. Well, the simplest answer is that a charged particle sets up an electric field. If a charged particle is placed in an electric field it will experience a force that will tend to make the particle move.
Without going into the derivation (which isn't too complex) you end up with the value of the electric field generated by a charge q:
| Electric Field (newtons per coulomb) |
= | 9 × 109 q/r |
As far as what an electric field actually is, here once more you get lots of answers. It is a "change in the structure" of space. Or maybe it's a "non-physical entity that acts on specific types of matter." There is even the answer that the particles engage in "virtual photon exchange" or other mumbo-jumbo so beloved of quantum electrodynamicists like Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman.
Richard Feynman
Mumbo Jumbo
On the other hand some experts say an electric field doesn't really exist. It's simply a way of restating Coulomb's Law with only one particle. And that's as good an answer as any.
A Volt-Face
But the nice thing about an electric field is it lets us define a new unit. And a unit that everyone has heard of.
OK. Just take the basic units of the electric field:
newtons per coulomb
... and you can always multiply the unit by 1 and have the same value. And since 1 has no units you can assign a unit to the numerator as long there's the same unit in the denominator. That is, 1 can have the units of meters per meter.
So we have:
|
|
|
|
|
... which of course is the same as:
|
Now with your physics, you'll remember that
Work = Force × Distance
And with some pardonable lack of precision, we know that:
Work = Energy
And using newtons and meters, the energy unit is the joule.
joules = newtons × meters
So what we have now is:
|
... or written in another way:
|
|
|
And now if you look at the first fraction we have the units:
|
... or in everyday parlance:
joules per coulomb
So what we have is a unit of energy per unit electric charge. If the charge is sitting in an electric field and not moving, the joules per coulomb is the potential energy of the electric charge. That is, it's a measure of the electric potential.
As brevity is the very soul of wit, the joules per coulomb is simply called a volt.
volt = joules per coulomb
Which from our definition of the electric field,
| Electric Field (newtons per coulomb) |
= | 9 × 109 q/r (volts per meter) |
So if you're standing 1 meter away from a charge of 1 coulomb, you are standing in an electric potential of 9,000,000,000 volts.
So do not try this at home - or anywhere else.
Now we can return to the two soccer balls with the electrons from the 5.25 nanograms. If you take one of the soccer balls away, the electric potential at the point 1 yard from the surface of the other ball is 10,000 volts.
From Baltimore to Washington
But what, you ask, does all this have to do with a single wire for a telegraph from Washington to Baltimore?
Suppose instead of a soccer ball, we spread those same electrons over the surface of the earth. Using elementary mathematics and physics, we can now calculate the electric potential a yard from the surface of the earth.
Since the earth is 3963 miles in radius, that's nearly 6,974,880 yards compared to the soccer ball's 22 cm (0.24 yards) for the soccer ball. So the electric potential caused by those electrons 1 yard above the earth is:
| Electric Potential | = | 10,000 × (1 + 0.24)/(6974880 + 1) |
| = | 0.002 Volts |
So a potential of 10,000 volts from a charged soccer ball drops to 0.002 volts if spread out over the earth.
But suppose we dispersed the charge around the planet Mars? Its radius is "only" 2160 miles or 3,706,560 yards. Well, in that case the potential 1 yard above the surface drops to:
| Electric Potential | = | 10,000 × (1 + 0.24)/(3706560 + 1) |
| = | 0.003 Volts |
So for all practical purposes, spreading electric potential over the surface of a planet - be it Earth or Mars - produces a voltage of zero.
And not just for all practical purposes. After all, the electrons don't just sit undisturbed at the surface. Instead, they penetrate the ground and react with atoms. Once the electrons get dispersed and bound up they have no effect. So the potential at the surface of the Earth or Mars really is a big fat zero.
Which brings us to a system that should work, that is, having a one wire telegraph system from one planet to another.
As far as we know, Sam never tried this.
End of High Nerd Content Sections.
To return to the top of the nerd content, just click here.
Sam the Jerk
OK, OK. We know that Sam lived until 1872 and saw the connection of not just the Transcontinental Telegraph but also the trans-Atlantic Telegraphs. He received honors from many countries and died a famous and wealthy man.
But we also said that Sam was a jerk. What, you ask, is the justification for this scurrilous accusation?
Now we don't mean Sam was a jerk because he thought the theater was too risqué for true 
Family Values. Or even because in 1827 he helped establish the New York Journal of Commerce which wouldn't carry ads for theaters. Being a prude - even a ridiculous prude - doesn't necessarily mean you're a jerk.
No, we mean Sam was a jerk.
You see, Sam was a member of what is called the Nativist movement. In brief, the Nativists were mostly anti-Irish. For some reason, they thought Irish culture was antithetical to the way of life. But like all bigots they didn't admit they were bigots. Instead they claimed they were just being patriotic.
So Sam and the other Nativists had to convince themselves that they weren't singling out just one particular group. Remember many Irish were not just immigrants, but they were Catholic. But there were a lot of other immigrants besides the Irish that were Catholics. Italian, Polish, and Slavic immigrants brought Catholicism to the regions where they settled.
So Sam and the Nativists decided it wasn't just the Irish. So regardless of religion they didn't want immigrants, and regardless of their citizenship they didn't want Catholics.
Sam took it upon himself to inform the people of the great peril threatening their country. So he really went off his rocker and wrote some of the dumbest articles ever penned for the New York Observer. He said there was a massive conspiracy where the Pope was urging Catholic nations to fight against America. Sam collected the articles in a book called Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States. Even though it was written under a pseudonym (a common practice of the time), everyone knew Sam was the author.
Like many people who see conspiracies all around, Sam decided he needed to do more to save world. So in 1836 he ran for mayor of New York on the Nativist ticket.
Sam's problem was a lot of people worked with immigrants and Catholics all the time, and everyone got along fine. Besides, the immigrants (Catholic or not) were wanting to be part of America. They didn't want to tear it down.
In the election Sam was stomped. He came in fourth out of four, garnering scarcely more than a thousand votes.
It got to the point that even Sam's friends thought he was nuts. As an editorial in the New York Commercial Advertiser put it:
Mr. Morse is a scholar and a gentleman - an able man - an accomplished artist - and we should like on ninety-nine accounts to support him. But the hundredth forbids it. Somehow or other he has got warped in his politics.
Quite literally Sam and his friends only wanted white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the US. So when the Civil War began, although Sam remained in the North and opposed succession, he denounced abolitionists and supported slavery, which he said was the true will of God.
Sam even contributed to the - quote - "literature" - unquote - advocating slavery. One of his more ridiculous books was An Argument on the Ethical Position of Slavery in the Social System and its Relation to the Politics of the Day. Easily classified as a rant, a sample passage - with Sam's capitalization, punctuation, and italics - is:
CHRISTIANITY HAS BEEN MOST SUCCESSFULLY PROPAGATED AMONG A BARBAROUS RACE, WHEN THEY HAVE BEEN ENSLAVED TO A CHRISTIAN RACE. Slavery to them has been Salvation, and Freedom, ruin.
As you see, Sam was not only a jerk, but a complete ass.
Today, though, most people have forgotten both Sam the Artist and Sam the Jerk. Instead, they remember Sam the Inventor of the Telegraph.
But he still was a jerk.
References
Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, Kenneth Silverman, Knopf, 2003.
"Samuel F. B. Morse Papers at the Library of Congress, 1793 to 1919", Library of Congress.
"What the Digital Age Owes to the Inventor of Morse Code Painted portrait of American artist and inventor Samuel Morse (1791 - 1872)". Sean Trainor, Time, April 27, 2016.
"The Telegraph", David Gagnon, Rolly Martin Country.
"The Overland Telegraph: Completion of the Line to San Francisco. A Message from the Mayor of San Francisco to the Mayor of New-York", The New York Times, October 26, 1861.
"Impressment of American Sailors", Prelude to the War of 1812, The Mariner's Museum.
"The Heartbreak That May Have Inspired the Telegraph", Gabe Bullard, National Geographic, April 26, 2016.
"Telegraph", Donald Fulton, Twinkle Toes Engineering< June, 2008.
Dot-Dash To Dot.Com: How Modern Telecommunications Evolved from the Telegraph to the Internet, Andrew Wheen, Springer, 2010,
"The Electromagnetic Telegraph", Dr James B. Calvert, University of Denver, December 26, 2008.
"The Electric Telegraph (1838-1922)", Thomas White, United States Early Radio History, September 1, 2012.
"Samuel Morse's Reversal of Fortune", David McCullough, Smithsonian Magazine, September 2011
Ancient Civilizations, Volumes 1 - 6, DVD, Questar, 2002.