Biography

He was apainter and inventor. S. Morse was born in Charlestown, Mass. He began painting, by studying in England under Washington Allston and Benjamin West. He returned to New England, and lived in New York City where he started the American Academy of Design. His painting, The Old House of Representatives, and his portrait of Lafayette , did not go to the government art commissions as he had planned. His last major work, was The Exhibition Gallery of the Louvre, it was based on another trip he had taken. Again in New York , he began his many electrical experiments. From 1835 to 1838 he invented the telegraph, a way to send a series of dots and dashes, representing the alphabet, over telegraph lines by means of electromagnets. Special telegraph lines were made to carry messages using the Morse code from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland. He also introduced the daguerreotype, a photographic process, to America. Today he is honored for his work as both a painter and an inventor.


5   W's

Who: Samuel Finley Breese Morse

What: Invented the telegragh to transport messages 
      through dashes and dots

Where: At his labratory of electrical expiriments in D.C

When: 1836

Why: To transmit information over long distances

Bibliography

Encarta '97 Encyclopedia
Groliers Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia Brittanica
A & E Online






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