Samuel Morse is famed as the creator of Morse code and was also telegraph's greatest promoter.
Morse was a well-off, well-connected artist, who had also studied chemistry and philosophy at Yale University before becoming intrigued by the telegraph. Telegraphy still needed complex wiring and he wanted a way to send messages using only one wire instead of five.
He developed a 'language' that translated letters of the alphabet and numerals into individual code 'symbols' that could travel down the same wire one after the other and be printed out at the receiving end; these formed the basis of Morse Code. In 1844, he sent his first public message, which read: 'What hath God wrought!' The subsequent development of a sounder device meant that his dots and dashes could be 'read' by ear as well as visually on paper.
Morse was extremely sociable, married twice and had many children. His invention made him popular and wealthy and he gave generously to charity, especially poor artists.
