TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN
Morse Code
A. Samuel Finley Breese Morse, Inventor ofseveral improvements to the telegraph, was born in Charlestown, Mass. On April27, 1791. As a student at Yale College Morse became interested in both paintingand the developing subject of electricity. After his graduation in 1810, hefirst concentrated on painting, which he studied in England. He would laterbecome a well-known portrait artist.
B. After moving to New York in 1825, he becamea founder and the first president of the National Academy of Design. He alsoran for office, but was defeated in both his campaigns to become New Yorkmayor. Meanwhile, Morse maintained a steady interest in invention, taking outthree patents for pumps in 1817 with his brother Sidney Edwards Morse. Itwasn’t until 1832 that he first became interested in telegraphy.
C. That year, Morse was traveling to the UnitedStates from Europe on a ship, when he overheard a conversation aboutelectromagnetism that inspired his idea for an electric telegraph. Though hehad little training in electricity, he realized that pulses of electricalcurrent could convey information over wires. The telegraph, a device firstproposed in 1753 and first built in 1774, was an impractical machine up untilthat point, requiring 26 separate wires, one for each letter of the alphabet.Around that time two German engineers had invented a five-wire model, but Morsewanted to be the first to reduce the number of wires to one.
D. Between 1832 and 1837 he developed a workingmodel of an electric telegraph, using crude materials such as a home-madebattery and old clockwork gears. He also acquired two partners to help himdevelop his telegraph: Leonard Gale, a professor of science at New York University,and Alfred Vail, who made available his mechanical skills and his family’s NewJersey iron works to help construct better telegraph models.
E. Morse’s first telegraph device, unveiled in1837, did use a one-wire system, which produced an EKG-like line on tickertape.The dips in the line had to be decoded into letters and numbers using adictionary composed by Morse, this assuming that the pen or pencil wroteclearly, which did not always happen. By the following year he had developed animproved system, having created a dot-and-dash code that used different numbersto represent the letters of the English alphabet and the ten digits. (Hisassistant Vail has been credited by Franklin T. Pope – later a partner ofThomas Edison – with inventing this “dots and dashes” version). This codingsystem was significantly better, as it did not require printing or decoding,but could be “sound read” by operators. In 1838, at an exhibition of histelegraph in New York, Morse transmitted ten words per minute using the Morsecode that would become standard throughout the world.
F. In 1842, Morse convinced Congress to provide$30,000 in support of his plan to “wire” the United States. Meanwhile, Morsealso solicited and received advice from a number of American and Europeantelegraphy experts, including Joseph Henry of Princeton, who had invented aworking telegraph in 1831, and Louis Breguet of Paris. In 1844, Morse filed fora patent (granted 1849) of the printing telegraph. HE had already proved thathis device worked over short distances, and the Federal funds he raised hadallowed him to string a wire from Baltimore to Washington. On May 11, 1844,Morse sent the first inter-city message. Soon thereafter, he gave the firstpublic demonstration, in which he sent a message from the chamber of theSupreme Court to the Mount Clair train depot in Baltimore. The message itselfwas borrowed from the Bible by the daughter of the Commissioner of Patents andsaid, “What hath God wrought?” By 1846, private companies, using Morse’spatent, had built telegraph lines from Washington to Boston and Buffalo, andwere pushing further. The telegraph spread across the US more quickly than hadthe railroads, whose routes the wires often followed. By 1854, there were23,000 miles of telegraph wire in operation. Western Union was founded in 1851,and in 1868, the first successful trans-Atlantic cable link was established.Though Morse didn’t invent the telegraph and did not single-handedly createMorse Code, he may have been telegraphy’s greatest promoter, and undoubtedlycontributed to its rapid development and adoption throughout the world.
G. Morse died of pneumonia in New York on April2, 1872. Late in his life, he shared his considerable wealth through grants tocolleges such as Yale and Vassar, in addition to charities and artists.
--- Adapted from: thepublications of MIT School of Engineering
Questions1—6
On your answer sheet pleasewrite
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in thepassage.
1 Morse was a great inventor as wellas a famous portrait artist.
2 Too many separated wires of thetelegraph prototype made it unfeasible.
3 It is unnecessary for operators todecipher Morse code.
4 Morse invented the printingtelegraph in 1844.
5 The wires sometimes followed therailroad routes in US.
6 The telegraph was invented byMorse.
