THE END OF THE MORSE CODE

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 114, 10 November 1934, Page 25

THE END OF THE MORSE CODE

Obituary: Recontly passed the last dot-and-dash of the old Morse code, as employed at the Central Telegraph Office for over seventy years, says the "Daily Mail." > It consisted of the end of a prosaic message to the no less prosaic-sounding Kentish town of'Sidcup.

: One.is taking no risks.'in. asserting| with finality that neither the sender nor the receiver, and probably not the operator, realised that it broke a link x be-| 1 tween this year of 1934 and the time |of the*. French Revolution. The man who made it possible for I our General Post Office to go dottingj and-dashing all over the place for more thani seventy years-was born in;those hectic days.. He was Samuel Finley Breese Morse, of Charlesfown,\Mass., and he first started imposing his personality on his litle world not as a scientist, but as an artist, although he j had shown some interest in the study of electricity while at Yale. I It was as an artist 'that he came to | England, some timo before Waterloo. Twenty years were to pass before he I was to put down his pencil'and brushes land surround.. himself with coils of wire, unsightly-looking bars, and the other gadgets of a pioneer electrical in-!-ventor. . , '"" 'It .realty started on his voyage back Ito "America from this country. Gazing one' day across an empty sea, he was visited by the idea of sending messages over wires;by means of electro-magnets. lAs soon "as ho landed he began to cxi periment and, incidentally, to starve. Samuel had a bad time. Perhaps it is las well that he didn't know that,there

■were worse times to come

Ho had the triumph of sending a. message over 500 *yards of wire and thought his hour of fortune had arrived. But his excitement, proved noninfectious. Congress shelved the invention. England showed no interest. France actually "pinched" it. He tried to sell the idea to Bussia, and that went wrong, too. Poor Mr. Morse had a bitter struggle, not only with the world but within his own souL

Then, in 1843, Congress began to take , notice; ■ There was a project ttf erect" a telegraph, based on Morse's system, betWeen Baltimore and Washington, and : \a year later it was used fpr>!ttie firstvtime. Eesult: Morse was Vput';tp the necessity of defending his invention invjthe courts. But he came out legally"and'offlcially recognised as tho "original inventor of the' electromagnetic recording telegraph." After that, all was'fairly plain sailing. Austria, Belgium, Prance, 'Holland, Eussia, Sweden, the Holy See, and Turkey made payments in recognition of the u£§ 'H iris invention in their territories. . His systenf eS signalling became indispensable tq |fctpid communication; moreover, it 'W^JS leadily adaptable to light as well .as sound. _The world's armies- have Wade * extensive use of it, and it is of vital importance to modern shipping. „V4SOS'-'•;.jn,Morse has averted' many. disasters; -'saved many lives. ~ And althougt.our Post Office has discarded it, shipping, railways, aeroplanes, and the fighting services will go on using it for a good many years to come. , - . >■ /;?