The Inventor
Samuel Morse
This man is known to be very meritorious in the field of communication technology. Although known as a painter, Samuel Morse is known as the inventor of the morse cipher and the telegraph machine.
His work is still used today, especially the morse code used in communicating, especially during the world war. While the telegraph became a tool that later revolutionized the world of communication at that time and as a turning point in communication technology in world history.
His full name is Samuel Finley Breese Morse. It was later known as Samuel F. B. Morse or Samuel Morse. The inventor of the Morse codename and telegraph was born on April 27, 1791 in Charlestown, outside the city of Boston, Massachusetts.
From the age of four, Morse was very interested in drawing. When he was four years old, he tried to draw his teacher's face. When he was 14 years old, he tried to collect pocket money by drawing the faces of his friends and people in the city.
ASPIRE AS A PAINTER
While studying at Yale College, Morse was not a smart student. His interest in science arose while attending lectures on the latest developments in electricity. However, he felt more comfortable when drawing miniature portraits.
One day, he sent a letter to his parents, about his desire to become a painter. His father and mother were concerned that he could not make ends meet by becoming a painter. So, they told him to become a bookseller only.
BECOME A BOOKSELLER
Eventually, Morse worked as a bookseller, but at night he still painted. His parents realized Morse's love for the art world. They tried to find and raise money to send Morse to an art school in London.
When Samuel Morse was at the Royal Academy in London, his teacher always said he had not completed his duties. He has about 20 drawing tasks that he has yet to complete. Morse continued to make this mistake over and over again until his teacher often advised him.
Finally, he tried to model a statue of Hercules made of clay in the classroom. His teacher loved the statue and told Morse to take it to a race.
It's not wrong anymore. He won a gold medal for his work. High trust, making Morse managed to find what is best for him. He began to try again to draw pictures of people in Europe.
In 1818, he married and later had two sons and a daughter. Life is not easy. No one gave him money for his paintings until Morse had no money at all.
In 1825, his wife died of a heart attack. Morse did not even know what happened to his wife, and when she died. He was always sad and almost gave up on painting.
After that, Morse and several other painters tried to establish the National Academy and he became its first president. He worked as a painter from seven in the morning until midnight. He was chosen as a painter in a round room in the Capitol, America.
One of the four wall paintings on display is his work. After that, he and his children and brother-in-law returned to Europe to continue his career as a painter.
HISTORY AND INVENTORS OF TELEGRAPHS
In the early 19th century, two major advances in electricity opened the door to the invention of the telegraph machine by Samuel Morse. First, in 1800, Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) invented the battery, which could store electric power.
In 1820, Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) discovered the connection between electricity and magnetism. His experiments involved deflecting magnetic needles with electric current.
Scientists and inventors around the world began experimenting with batteries and the principles of electromagnetism. The goal is to develop a kind of communication system.
As for the figures who played a role in the invention of the telegraph, there were two groups, namely from England, Sir William Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone. Samuel Morse, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail of America.
In the 1830s, British scientists Cooke and Wheatstone developed the first telegraph system. He designed a device where there are five magnetic needles that can be directed around a panel of letters and numbers using an electric current.
The system he created was then used as a system of sisyal on trains in England. Meanwhile, in another location, Samuel Morse also worked on his own developing the electric telegraph.
He was reportedly interested in Cooke and Wheatstone's ideas about electromagnetism when he sailed from Europe to America in the early 1830s.
After working hard, Samuel Morse finally invented the electric telegraph with a single circuit. The Telegraph mechanism created by Morse is by pressing the operator button to complete the battery electric circuit.
This action then sends an electrical signal through the cable to the receiver at the other end. All the systems needed are keys, batteries, wires, and a polar line between stations for cables and receivers.
INVENTOR SANDI MORSE
To transmit messages over telegraph wires in the 1830s, Morse and his assistant Alfred Vail created what became known as Morse code or cipher.
The code is created in an alphabet and numbers a set of dots (short marks) and dashes (long marks) based on the frequency of use. As for frequently used letters such as “E” get a simple code.
While rarely used letters such as “Q” get a longer and complex code. Initially, the code, when transmitted through a telegraph system, was given a mark on a piece of paper which would then be translated back by the telegraph operator into English.
But over time the operator can hear and understand the code just by listening to the click of the message receiver. So that the paper is replaced with a receiver that produces a clearer beep.
The codes created by Morse along with the Telegraph became known as Morse Passwords. Morse, dissatisfied with his art career, had given all his time to the telegraph.
DEVELOPMENT OF TELEGRAPH COMMUNICATION TOOLS
In the biography of Samuel Morse as quoted from history.com it is known that in 1843, he along with Alfred Vail received funding from the American Congress. The fund is for the purposes of preparing and testing the telegraph system as a new communication system between Washington, D. C., and Baltimore, Maryland.
On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first historic message via telegraph to Vail which read “What God does!”. The telegraph communication system then spread throughout America and began to be adopted around the world.
Furthermore, machines and communication systems through the telegraph are continuously developed and refined. Among these improvements was the invention of good insulation for telegraph cables.
The person behind this innovation is Ezra Cornell, one of the founders of the university in New York. Another improvement from the famous lamp inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, in 1874. Alva Edison invented the Quadruplex system that allowed four messages to be sent simultaneously using the same cable.
The use of the telegraph was quickly accepted by people who wanted a faster and easier way to send and receive informational messages. However, the ever-expanding and successful use of devices requires an integrated system of telegraph stations through which information can be transmitted.
The Telegraph company Western Union, founded by Cornell, was originally one of many emerging telegram companies.
In 1861, Western Union built the first transcontinental telegraph line. This made it the first national telegraph company. The telegraph system then began to spread widely around the world.
In 1866, the first permanent telegraph cable was successfully installed across the Atlantic Ocean where there were about 40 lines of telegraph cable across the Atlantic in 1940.
The electric telegraph also changed the way in which war was conducted, as well as the way journalists and newspapers conducted their business. The benefits of the telegraph in economics are also enormous. For example, allow money when it can “ditransfer” across a very long distance.
Even in the late 19th century, new technologies began to emerge, but many of them were based on the same principles from when the telegraph was invented. Although the telegraph has been replaced by the telephone, fax machine and the more convenient Internet, its invention stands as a turning point in communication technology in the history of the world.
SAMUEL MORSE IS DEAD
Morse died of pneumonia in New York on April 2, 1872. He died at the age of 80. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, United States.
After the death of Samuel Morse, his tools namely Telegraph and Morse Password began to be used widely by the community. During World War I and II, Morse ciphers were widely used by the military to exchange messages or communicate over long distances via telegraph other than by telephone.
