Morse was invented by an art student

Camp News, Volume 3, Issue 150, 27 November 1942, Page 3

Morse was invented by an art student

When Samuel Finley Breese Morse -Amer,can artist and inventor-firs wo°rd? ° f , he Mea “ “'“fitting dots and d A 1 ™ current - by utilising dots and dashes, he little realised that tathe am ' Ch ; M would be a vital factor i the greatest war of all time Recently, as cable company chiefs celebrated the Morse thousands of youths— girls, too-all over Britain were bent over model Morse telegraph instruments, patiently tapping out the language of dots and dashes.

Through these students, when their course is finished warship will speak to warship fighter plane and heavy bomber will speak to their base. Although Morse invented his code for peace, it is, perhaps, more than any other medium, the language of war.

Strange, then, that this codenow used by all countries — should have been invented by a man who devoted most of his youth to studying art. It was on a trip back from Paris in a small packet boat on the heaving Atlantic wastes, that the idea first came io forty-one-year-old Sam Morse.

As with so many great ideas, it was difficult to convince others of the value of the code. Even his own go-ahead countrymen were sceptical. They told him he was a fool.

To prove his theory, Morse worked night and day, insulating two miles of wire with hemp thread, saturated with tar and surrounded with rubber.

He wanted to show that it was possible to send a message by wire under water. Eventually his “cable” was finished.

He hired a rowing boat and unreeled the wire through the waters -of New York Harbour. One end he left behind at Castle Garden; the other he made fast at Governor’s Island.

“What God hath wrought,” was the first message which came faintly over his primitive telegraph cable a hundred years ago.

Only a few more words had been transmitted, when an anchor dragged over his cable and snapped it; but at last he had convinced his critics, and became the inventor of the electromagnetic recording telegraph.

A few years later, representatives from European countries were paying hard cash to use Morse patents.

Morse code has been the means of saving thousands of lives during the hundred years it has been in use. The youngest schoolboy is familiar with he three dots, three dashes, three dots which signal SOS.

Incidentally these letters do not stand for “Save our Souls, but are merely three letters used for convenience. The first distress call at sea was “C —formerly used over, land

lines to arrest attention before an important message. This signal was followed by CQ D, interpreted by the imaginative as “Come Quick, Danger.” In 1906, Germany proposed to make the signal “S O. E,” but the International Radio, Commission feared the “E,” a single dot, might be lost in the ether, so “S” was substituted. When the Titanic went down, after striking an iceberg, both SOS and C Q D were used by the doomed liner’s operators. The war has introduced a Morse signal even more familiar perhaps than SO. S— for Victory. Sam Morse, who died at the ripe old age of 81, did the right thing when he gave up art for science.