Morse, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE

Morse, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE, American artist and inventor, was the eldest son of Rev. Dr Jedidiah Morse, geographer, and was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, April 27, 1791. He graduated at Yale College in 1810, and visited England with the American painter Washington Allston, to study painting with him and Benjamin West. In 1813 he received the gold medal of the Adelphi Society of Arts for his first effort in sculpture, the 'Dying Hercules.' Returning to New York in 1815, he became the first president of the National Academy of Design, which was established in 1826, and filled the office till 1842, and was appointed professor of the Arts of Design in the university of the city of New York in 1835. He did not give his entire attention to art, but devoted much study to chemistry, especially to electrical and galvanic experiments; and on a voyage from Havre to New York in 1832 he conceived the idea of a magnetic telegraph, which he exhibited to congress in 1837, and vainly attempted to patent in England. His claims to priority of invention over Professor Wheatstone in England have been the subject of considerable controversy (see TELEGRAPH). He struggled on heroically against scanty means until 1843, when at length congress, at midnight, in the last moments of the session, appropriated 30,000 dollars for an experimental telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. Morse lived to see his system of telegraphy adopted in France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Australia. Honours both from home and abroad were heaped upon him, and an international present of 400,000 francs was given him in 1858, at the instance of Napoleon III. A bronze statue was erected to him in New York in 1871. He died in New York, 1872. See the Life by S. I. Prime (New York, 1875).