Remembering the Telegraph

In an age of telephones and computers and emails, for many of us it is difficult to

imagine a time when we couldn't talk to people from miles and miles away on a moment's

whim. Indeed, there was in fact an era when our epiphanies were not instantly

transferable, and they often had to stay in our heads for a little while until we could

transcribe them to paper and wait days, weeks, even months for them to be carried away

on a horse in an envelope. Morse code and the electric telegraph was the first time in

human history that communication was sent through electric means, and would shape the

progress of communication for the rest of history to come.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April

27, 1791. He showed an interest in art as a child, and he would go on to graduate from

Yale College in 1810. His father was originally opposed to his interest in art, but reversed

his decision and in 1811 allowed him to travel to England to pursue it, learning under

artist Benjamin West. When he returned to America, he made a living as a portrait artist in

Boston, Massachusetts, and became the president of the National Academy of design.

Several hard blows were delivered however when his wife and both parents died in a

three­year span; he went back to Europe, and when he returned, everything changed

(Encyclopedia of World Biography.)

On the voyage back to America, he met an eccentric man called Charles

Thomas Jackson, with whom he discussed electromagnetism. Morse was assured by him

that electric impulse could in fact travel across a very long wire, and this made him muse,

“I see no reason why intelligence might not be instantaneously transmitted by electricity to

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...ed in on itself and became

several sizes smaller, like the Grinch's heart in reverse.

Morse wrote of it in a letter in 1838, “This mode of instantaneous communication

must inevitably become an instrument of immense power, to be wielded for good or for

evil, as it shall be properly or improperly directed." And so it has, evolving and

transforming even into the internet, which allows the sharing of information instantly all

over the world. It is indeed used for both good and evil and that vague and irritating

middle ground where people incessantly post pictures of their food and share their every

passing thought in status updates. The instant transfer of information is an idea that

impacted the world hugely then and continues to impact us today, and shape the way our

very world works.

th

century, the telegraph was instrumental in all distance