Samuel Morse

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791 to 1872) was an American inventor and painter, born in Charlestown near Boston. After establishing his reputation as a portrait painter he contributed in middle age to the invention of a single wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs, and he was a co developer and the namesake of Morse code in 1837. With Alfred Vail he made the first public demonstration of the electric telegraph at the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey, in January 1838, and on 24 May 1844 the line from Washington to Baltimore was officially opened with his message What hath God wrought. His priority over earlier European telegraph inventors was contested, and he fought to be called the sole inventor. Morse code is among the earliest schemes for encoding text as signals sent over a wire.