20 June 1840: patent granted for Morse code

Frustrated by the slow transit of news across the Atlantic, Samuel Morse was awarded a patent for the telegraph code that still bears his name.

Dr Matthew Partridge
By
published
in Features

160614-samuel-morse

Morse: inspired by tragedy

Most inventors have an interest in either science or engineering. However, for the first four decades of his life, Samuel Morse's great passion was painting.

After getting his parents' permission to travel to England in 1811 to study at the Royal Academy in London, Morse became a well-known American painter.

However, while carrying out a major commission in 1825, he received news that his wife was unexpectedlyill. But, because the letter was delayed inthe post, she had been buried by the time he returned home.

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While returning from an overseas painting tour in 1832, Morse met a scientist who told him about the developments in electromagnets.

Remembering how the slow speed of mail had personally affected him, he put his painting to one side and came up with the idea for a system that could rapidly transmit information over an electrical wire.

While very primitive telegraph machines already existed, Morse worked out that the Morse Code', a system of representingletters by dots and dashes, could greatly speedup the process.

By 1837, he had developed a working prototype and submitted a patent application (which would be granted in June 1840).

By 1842, he had persuaded the US government to provide financial support to lay the first wires between Washington DC and Baltimore, transmitting the first inter-city message ("what hath God wrought?") in 1844.

This generated a huge amount of public interest, leading to a dramatic rise in investment. By 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph was constructed. Finally, in 1866 an undersea cable connected Britain and America.

Dr Matthew Partridge
Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri

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