Samuel Morse was the first of three sons born to Jedidiah Morse (a minister and geographer) and his wife, Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese, in Charleston, Massachusetts.  The family was brought up in a religious environment. At the age of 8, Samuel attended boarding school in Andover, MA and entered Yale College in New Haven, CT when he was just 14 years old, studying religious philosophy, math and science.  As a child, he loved to paint and his artistic talent supported him financially throughout school when he painted portraits of friends, classmates and teachers ($1 for a profile; $5 for a miniature portrait on ivory). Samuel graduated with honors in 1810.  Despite his wishes for a career as a painter, his parents envisioned him to be a bookseller's apprentice, so he took a clerk position for his father's Boston book publisher.

Eventually, Samuel's parents realized his true passion was to be an artist, and on July 15, 1811 they reluctantly allowed him to sail to England to study art under the tutorship of famed artist, Washington Allston.  The War of 1812 broke out in the U.S. the following year and caused political and religious disruptions in his relationship with his father.  His paintings took on political and religious themes, which continued during his artistic career.  When he returned to the United States in August 1815, he began receiving commissions for portraits among the elite and government officials.  He frequently traveled between Europe and the U.S. to complete assignments and honing his artistic skills.

He married Lucretia Walker on September 29, 1819 in Concord, New Hampshire.  Shortly after the birth of their third child in January 1825, Samuel was in Washington, DC, working on a portrait of a French aristocrat and military officer when a horse messenger delivered a letter from his father that read, "Your dear wife is convalescent."  Samuel left immediately left for his New Haven, Ct. home, leaving the portrait unfinished.  By the time he arrived, his wife had died (February 7th) and had already been buried.  Heartbroken in the knowledge that for days he was unaware of his wife's failing health and her lonely death, he began to pursue an idea for rapid long-distance communication.

Leaving his young children in the care of family members, Samuel set sail for Europe in 1829 to further his art studies and paint landscapes. On his 1832 voyage home to New York, Samuel met Prof. Charles Jackson of Boston who conversed with him about European experiments with electromagnetism (sending electric signals over long distances of insulated wire).  Inspired, Samuel wrote in his sketch book his ideas for a prototype of a single-wire electromagnetic recording telegraph using a code system.  In the fall of 1835, Samuel constructed a recording telegraph which punched a moving paper ribbon with alphabetically numbered coded text. In the spring of 1837 he showed his invention to Leonard Gale, a science professor at New York University, along with his plans for relays where one electric circuit is used to open and close another electric circuit further away.  For his knowledge assistance on the project, Prof. Gale became part owner of the telegraph rights.

In September 1837, Alfred Vail, an acquaintance of Samuel, was taken on as a third partner because of his financial resources, mechanical skills and access to his family's iron works for building telegraph models. The original Morse code was expanded in 1838 by Samuel and Alfred to include letters and special characters so it could be used more generally. Alfred determined the frequency of use of letters in the English language by counting the movable type he found in the type-cases of a local newspaper. The shorter marks were called "dots," and the longer ones "dashes" and the letters most commonly used were assigned the shorter sequences of dots and dashes, thus eliminating the need to encode and decode each word to be transmitted. (In the original Morse telegraphs, the receiver's armature made a clicking noise as it moved in and out of position to mark the paper tape. Telegraph operators later learned that they could translate the clicks directly into dots and dashes, and write these down by hand, thus making it unnecessary to use a paper tape.)

Seeing Samuel's success with the telegraph, Prof. Charles Jackson (Samuel's acquaintance from the 1832 voyage), attempted to claim to be the original inventor of the telegraph.  Samuel filed a formal rebuttal, and won -- the first of many such legal battles with others (including William Cooke and Prof. Charles Wheatstone) claiming invention rights over the years for his invention. It was not until 1840 when Samuel was finally granted a U.S. patent for his electromagnetic telegraph and code system -- two years after his patents were issued by England, France and Russia. His rights to the U.S. patent, however, went virtually ignored and were contested for years. It was not until 1854 that the U.S. Supreme Court finally upheld his patent claims as the first person to combine the battery, electromagnetism, the electromagnet and the correct battery configuration into a workable practical telegraph. Nevertheless, in spite of this clear ruling, Samuel still received no official recognition by the U.S. Government, although all U.S. companies that used his system slowly began to pay him royalties. In 1854, several European countries awarded him the combined equivalent of about $80,000 (at the time) for the use of his telegraph and coding system.

Samuel Morse died of pneumonia at his home in New York City on April 2, 1872 -- just 25 days short of his 81^st birthday. He was survived by his second wife, Sarah Griswold (a second cousin 26 years his junior, whom he married in August 1848 with whome he had four children). Samuel was always a generous, unselfish man who gave large sums to charity. Over the years, he had become interested in the relationship of science and religion and provided the funds to establish a lectureship on the relation of the Bible to the Sciences. Other people and corporations made millions using his inventions, yet most rarely paid him for the use of his patented telegraph. He was not bitter about this, though he would have appreciated more rewards for his labors. Samuel and his family lived a comfortable life and by the time of his death, his estate was valued at approximately $500,000 ($9.7 million today).

Morse Code Facts:

-  Morse code began to be used extensively for early radio communication in the 1890s, before it was possible to transmit voice.

-  In aviation, Morse code in radio systems started to be used on a regular basis in the 1920s.

-  In 1920 the U.S. Navy experimented with sending Morse code from an airplane.

-  There was no aeronautical radio in use during World War I, and no radio system was used during Charles Lindbergh's 1927 flight from New York to Paris.

-  Beginning in the 1930s, both civilian and military pilots were required to be able to use Morse code,

-  Radio telegraphy using Morse code was vital during World War II, especially in carrying messages between the warships and the naval bases. Additionally, rapidly moving armies in the field could not have fought effectively without radiotelegraphy because they moved more rapidly than telegraph and telephone lines could be erected.

-  Morse code was used as an international standard for maritime communication until 1999, when it was replaced by the Global Maritime Distress Safety System.

-  The United States Coast Guard has ceased all use of Morse code on the radio and no longer monitors any radio frequencies for Morse code transmissions.

-  Today's use of Morse code is still most popular among amateur radio operators.

-  Morse code has been employed as an assistive technology, helping people with a variety of disabilities to communicate, including people with severe motion disabilities and sensory disabilities (deaf or blind).

The Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (July 1-3, 1863), was the largest battle of the American Civil War (1865-1865), as well as the largest battle ever fought in North America, involving around 85,000 men in the Union's Army of the Potomac under Major General George Gordon Meade and approximately 75,000 in the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert Edward Lee.  Casualties at Gettysburg totaled 23,049 for the Union (3,155 dead; 14,529 wounded; 5,365 missing).  Confederate casualties were 28,063 (3,903 dead; 18,735 injured; 5,425 missing), more than a third of Lee's army. An estimated 569 tons of ammunition was fired during the three days of fighting.

Civilians at Gettysburg were left to deal with the thousands of wounded.  Homes and public buildings became hospitals, and diseases born of infection and unsanitary conditions made living in the town risky.  Volunteers came from the North and the South, however, to aid in caring for the wounded, burying the dead, and piling and burning carcasses of horses and mules killed in the fighting.

These largely irreplaceable losses to the South's largest army, combined with the Confederate surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 4, marked what is widely regarded as a turning point -- perhaps the turning point -- in the Civil War, although the conflict would continue for nearly two more years and witness several more major battles, including Chickamauga, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Mononacy, Nashville, etc.

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was delivered November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg.  The speech was extremely short by the standard of the day and received scant notice at the time, but its concise, powerful wording has made it one of the best-known public addresses in all of history.  Contrary to popular myth, Lincoln did not scribble the speech on the back of an envelope on his way to Gettysburg but wrote several drafts.  (Source:  www.historynet.com)

RIP

An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman were without tickets for the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics but hoped to be able to talk their way in at the gate.  Security was very tight, however, and each of their attempts was met with a stern refusal.

While wandering around outside the stadium, the Englishman came upon a construction site, which gave him an idea.  Grabbing a length of scaffolding, he presented himself at the gate and said, "Johnson, the pole vault," and was admitted.

The Scotsman, overhearing this, went at once to search the site.  When he came up with a sledge hammer, he presented himself at the gate and said, "McTavish, the hammer."  He was also admitted.

The Irishman combed the site for an hour and was nearly ready to give up when he spotted his ticket in.  Seizing a roll of barbed wire, he presented himself at the gate and announced, "O'Sullivan, fencing."