The code of Samuel Morse

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32892, 15 April 1972, Page 12

The code of Samuel Morse

(By

RICHARD YORK)

Although Samuel Morse died 100 years ago on April 2, the signalling code bearing his name is still very much alive, clicking and bleeping away all over the world. On certain radio wavebands you can hear the dramatic Morse messages from ships at sea and the constant stream of information and distress calls put out by coastal stations. The story of Morse continues to unfold, despite the onward march of the teleprinter which has conquered so much communications territory.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was by inclination more of an artist than an inventor, an idealist rather than a scientist. He was born on April 27, 1871, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the sixth descend ant of Anthony Morse, who in 1635 emigrated to the United States from Marlborough, Wiltshire. Two marriages When he was 19, Samuel graduated from Yale University, where he acquired a reputation for painting miniatures. He worked for a time in a book-store, but painting interests soon led to an expedition overseas. He sailed for England in

July, 1811, with his first wife who produced four children before her early death. Morse remained a widower for 23 years before marrying a girl 31 years his junior who gave him four more children. Apart from a short stay in Bristol, the painter spent four years in London where he had a picture hung in the Royal Academy. When he returned to America, Samuel set up a studio in Boston. His ambition was to “revive the splendour of the 15th century.” But he made little money and when the first Mrs Morse died in 1825, he spent three years studying painting in Italy and Paris. In 1832 he sailed for New York. During the voyage the dinner conversation turned to electricity and one passenger showed him some crude apparatus. Morse remarked, “If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously.” Shipboard remark Morse was 45 before he realised the significance of his own shipboard remark. He had jotted in his notebook an outline for practical telegraphy based on three principles; a sending apparatus which would open and close an electric circuit; a receiving machine worked by electromagnets which would record signals on a clockworkpropelled strip of paper; and a code to mark the alphabetical equivalents. At first Morse never dreamt that such an idea could be put to general use. He thought his proposed telegraph only suitable for government communications, so he devised a complicated "dot” code associated with a cumbersome translating dictionary. Finally, he adopted the now well-known system of dots and dashes based on the frequency of letter occurrence: one dot for the letter E, two dashes and two dots for Z. Relay system Morse found that he could not send electricity through more than 10 miles of wire.

So he contrived an electromagnetic relay device—a “renewer” which responded to weak signals—and retransmitted them with energy derived from a local battery. This enables a single operator to work a broadcast network over great distances. The relay system is still an integral part of modem telegraphy. Artist’s easel In 1835 Morse used an artist’s easel, a wooden pendulum. a suspended pen and electro-magnet for his first telegraph receiver - which wrote the signals zig-zag fashion on a moving strip o:' paper. Morse had earlier filed a United States patent and made similar applications in Europe. Britain was not then interested. In France, scientists pinned an array of medals on his chest but the Government ignored him. The inventor was 52, hungry and in debt before the United States Congress voted $30,000 for an experimental telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore. On May 24, 1844, Morse sent his famous first message in Morse code; “What God hath wrought.” Private development Morse was willing to sell his rights to the United States Government for $lOO,OOO, but the Postmaster-General thought the invention would not make money. So the development of Morse telegraphy fell into private hands. Soon a web of Morse “inkers” and “sounders” criss-crossed America, linking, for instance, the frontier towns of the West. Eventually the Morse code spread abroad to become the basis of a world communication system used by, among others, governments, shipping, international business, and the press. Morse code has not pro-, gressed into the computer age because the unequal letter length creates electronic and mechanical problems. Yet Samuel Morse would be gratified to know that his code is still on stage after a life-time of drama. Distress signals alone have saved countless lives—and wifemurderer Dr Crippen was caught, thanks to a radio Morse code message. Bronze statue Although Morse will eventually fade out of general use there will always be someone somewhere who will find a use for it. Did you know ■ that visual Morse messages can be exchanged by merely finger-tapping your nose? Old telegraphists love the Morse code because it evokes an entity. It is alive. Morse relates to the teleprinter like the steam locomotive does to the diesel engine: the latter has no soul. No wonder the telegraphists of the United States, even in the year before his death, unveiled a bronze statue in New York’s Central Park to immortalise Samuel Morse, the painter who sought to revive the splendour of the fifteenth century but who ended up revolutionising the rapid exchange of news and ideas between the nations of the world.