| 1791-1839
| 1840-1872 |
Letter from Morse to his parents about his life in school in Andover, 19 February 1804, Bound volume---2 July 1793-2 December 1807 (Series: General
Correspondence and Related Documents) |
| 1791 |
April 27 |
Samuel Finley Breese Morse is born in Charlestown, Massachusetts,
the first child of Jedidiah Morse, a Congregational minister and geographer,
and Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese. |
| 1794 |
February 7 |
Brother Sidney Edwards Morse is born. |
| 1795 |
June 18 |
Brother Richard Cary Morse is born. |
| 1799 |
|
Morse enters Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. |
| 1800 |
March |
Alessandro Volta of Italy creates the "voltaic pile," a battery
that produces a reliable, steady current of electricity. |
| 1805 |
|
Morse enters Yale College at age fourteen. He hears lectures
on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day. While at Yale, he
earns money by painting small portraits of friends, classmates, and teachers.
A profile goes for one dollar; and a miniature portrait on ivory sells for
five dollars. |
| 1810 |
|
Morse graduates from Yale College and returns to
Charlestown, Massachusetts. Despite his wishes to be a painter and
encouragement from the famed American painter Washington Allston,
Morse's parents plan for him to be a bookseller's apprentice. He becomes
a clerk for Daniel Mallory, his father's Boston book publisher. |
|
| 1811 |
July |
Morse's parents relent and let him set sail for England with
Washington Allston. He attends the Royal Academy of Arts in London and receives
instruction from the famed Pennsylvania-born painter Benjamin West. |
|
| |
December |
Morse rooms with Charles Leslie of Philadelphia, who is also
studying painting. They become friends with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
While in England, Morse also befriends the American painter Charles Bird
King, the American actor John Howard Payne, and the English painter Benjamin
Robert Haydon. |
|
| 1812 |
|
Morse models a plaster statuette of The Dying Hercules,
which wins a gold medal at the Adelphi Society of Arts exhibition in London.
His subsequent 6' x 8' painting of The Dying Hercules is exhibited
at the Royal Academy and receives critical acclaim. |
|
| 1815 |
October |
Morse returns to the United States. |
|
| |
|
Morse opens an art studio in Boston. |
|
| 1816 |
|
In search of portrait commissions to support himself, Morse
travels to New Hampshire. In Concord, he meets Lucretia Pickering Walker,
aged sixteen, and they are soon engaged to be married. |
|
| 1817 |
|
While in Charlestown, Morse and his brother Sidney patent
a flexible-piston man-powered water pump for fire engines. They demonstrate
it successfully, but it is a commercial failure. |
| |
|
Morse spends part of the year painting in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire. |
| 1818 |
September 29 |
Lucretia Pickering Walker and Morse are married in Concord,
New Hampshire. |
| |
|
Morse spends the winter in Charleston, South Carolina, where
he receives many portrait commissions. This is the first of four annual
trips to Charleston. |
| 1819 |
September 2 |
Morse's first child, Susan Walker Morse, is born. |
|
| |
|
The city of Charleston commissions Morse to paint a portrait
of President James Monroe. |
|
| 1820 |
|
The Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted discovers that
electric current in a wire generates a magnetic field that can deflect a
compass needle. This property will eventually be used in the design of some
electromagnetic telegraph systems. |
|
| 1821 |
|
While living with his family in New Haven, Morse paints such
distinguished individuals as Eli Whitney, Yale president Jeremiah Day, and
his neighbor Noah Webster. He also paints in Charleston and Washington,
D.C. |
|
| 1822 |
|
Morse invents a marble-cutting machine that can carve three
dimensional sculpture in marble or stone. He discovers that it is not patentable
because it infringes on an 1820 design by Thomas Blanchard. |
|
| |
|
Morse finishes an eighteen-month project to paint The
House of Representatives, an oversize scene of the Rotunda of the Capitol
in Washington, D.C. It contains more than eighty portraits of members of
Congress and justices of the Supreme Court, but loses money during its public
exhibition. |
|
| 1823 |
March 17 |
Second child, Charles Walker Morse, is born. |
|
| |
|
Morse opens an art studio in New York City. |
|
| 1825 |
|
The Marquis de Lafayette makes his last visit to the United
States. The City of New York commissions Morse to paint a portrait of Lafayette
for $1,000. |
|
| |
January 7 |
Third child, James Edward Finley Morse, is born. |
|
| |
February 7 |
Morse's wife, Lucretia, dies suddenly at age twenty-five.
By the time he is notified and returns home to New Haven, she has already
been buried. |
|
| |
November |
Artists in New York City form a drawing cooperative, the
New York Drawing Association, and elect Morse president. It is run by and
for artists, and its goals include art instruction. |
| |
|
William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet, which will be
a key component of the telegraph. |
| 1826 |
January |
In New York, Morse becomes a founder and first president
of the National Academy of Design, which has been established in reaction
to the conservative American Academy of Fine Arts. Morse is president on
and off for nineteen years. |
| |
June 9 |
Father, Jedidiah Morse, dies. |
| 1827 |
|
Morse helps launch the New York Journal of Commerce and
publishes Academics of Art. |
|
| |
|
Professor James Freeman Dana of Columbia College gives a
series of lectures on electricity and electromagnetism at the New York Athenaeum,
where Morse also lectures. Through their friendship, Morse becomes more
familiar with the properties of electricity. |
|
| 1828 |
May 28 |
Mother, Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese Morse, dies. |
|
| 1829 |
November |
Leaving his children in the care of other family members,
Morse sets sail for Europe. He visits Lafayette in Paris and paints in the
Vatican galleries in Rome. During the next three years, he visits numerous
art collections to study the work of the Old Masters and other painters.
He also paints landscapes. Morse spends much time with his novelist friend
James Fenimore Cooper. |
|
| 1831 |
|
The American scientist Joseph Henry announces his discovery
of a powerful electromagnet made from many layers of insulated wire. Demonstrating
how such a magnet can send electric signals over long distances, he suggests
the possibility of the telegraph. |
| 1832 |
Autumn |
During his voyage home to New York on the Sully, Morse
first conceives the idea of the electromagnetic telegraph during his conversations
with another passenger, Dr. Charles T. Jackson of Boston. Jackson describes
to him European experiments with electromagnetism. Inspired, Morse writes
ideas for a prototype of an electromagnetic recording telegraph and dot-and-dash
code system in his sketchbook. |
| |
|
Morse is appointed professor of painting and sculpture at the University
of the City of New York (now New York University).
|
|
| |
|
Morse works on developing the telegraph. |
|
| 1833 |
|
Morse completes work on the 6' x 9' painting Gallery of
the Louvre. The canvas contains forty-one Old Masters paintings in miniature.
The painting loses money during its public exhibition. |
|
| 1835 |
|
Morse is appointed professor of Literature of the Arts and
Design at the University of the City of New York (now New York University). |
|
| |
|
Morse publishes Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties
of the United States (New York: Leavitt, Lord & Co.), which had been
published serially in his brothers' weekly periodical, New York Observer.
It is a treatise against the political influence of Catholicism. |
|
| |
Autumn |
Morse constructs a recording telegraph with a moving paper
ribbon and demonstrates it to several friends and acquaintances. |
|
| 1836 |
January |
Morse demonstrates his recording telegraph to Dr. Leonard
Gale, a professor of science at New York University. |
|
| |
Spring |
Morse runs unsuccessfully for mayor of New York for a nativist
(anti-immigration) party. He receives 1,496 votes. |
|
| 1837 |
Spring |
Morse shows Dr. Gale his plans for "relays," where one electric
circuit is used to open and close a switch on another electric circuit further
away. For his assistance, the science professor becomes part owner of the
telegraph rights. By November, a message can be sent through ten miles of
wire arranged on reels in Dr. Gale's university lecture room. |
Agreement between Morse, Vail, and Gale, 23 September 1837, Bound
volume---28 November 1835-18 April 1838 (Series: General Correspondence
and Related Documents) |
| |
September |
Alfred Vail, an acquaintance of Morse, witnesses a demonstration
of the telegraph. He is soon taken on as a partner with Morse and Gale because
of his financial resources, mechanical skills, and access to his family's
iron works for building telegraph models. |
| |
|
Dr. Charles T. Jackson, Morse's acquaintance from the 1832
Sully voyage, now claims to be the inventor of the telegraph. Morse
obtains statements from those present on the ship at the time, and they
credit Morse with the invention. This is the first of many legal battles
Morse will face. |
| |
September 28 |
Morse files a caveat for a patent for the telegraph. |
Draft of Morse's petition for a patent, 1837, Bound volume---28
November 1835-18 April 1838 (Series: General Correspondence and Related
Documents) |
| |
|
After completing his last paintings in December, Morse withdraws
from painting to devote his attention to the telegraph. |
| |
|
The Englishmen William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone
patent their own five-needle telegraph system. The system was inspired by
a Russian design of an experimental galvanometer telegraph. |
| 1838 |
January |
Morse changes from using a telegraphic dictionary, where
words are represented by number codes, to using a code for each letter.
This eliminates the need to encode and decode each word to be transmitted. |
|
| |
January 24 |
Morse demonstrates the telegraph to his friends in his university
studio. |
Telegraph agreement between Morse, Smith, Vail, and Gale, 1838,
Bound volume---28 November 1835-18 April 1838 (Series: General
Correspondence and Related Documents) |
| |
February 8 |
Morse demonstrates the telegraph before a scientific committee
at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute. |
| |
|
Morse exhibits the telegraph before the U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Commerce, chaired by Representative F. O. J. Smith of Maine.
|
| |
February 21 |
Morse demonstrates the telegraph to President Martin Van
Buren and his cabinet. |
| |
March |
Congressman Smith becomes a partner in the telegraph, along
with Morse, Alfred Vail, and Leonard Gale. |
| |
April 6 |
Smith sponsors a bill in Congress to appropriate $30,000
to build a fifty-mile telegraph line, but the bill is not acted upon. Smith
conceals his part-interest in the telegraph and serves out his full term
of office. |
|
| |
May |
Morse travels to Europe in order to secure patent rights
for his electromagnetic telegraph in England, France, and Russia. He is
successful in France. |
Pages from Morse's daguerreotype notebook, 1840, Notebooks---Photography,
art, and miscellaneous (Series: Diaries and Notebooks)
|
| |
|
In England, Cooke puts his needle telegraph into operation
on the London and Blackwall Railway. |
| 1839 |
|
In Paris, Morse meets Louis Daguerre, the creator of the
daguerreotype, and publishes the first American description of this process
of photography. Morse becomes one of the first Americans to make daguerreotypes
in the United States. |
| Continue:
1840-1872 |
|
