Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, 2nd Edition

Chapter Seven

Telegraphs and Relays

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the town where the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought and which is now the northeast part of Boston. In the year of Morse’s birth, the United States Constitution had been in effect just two years and George Washington was serving his first term as president. Catherine the Great ruled Russia. In France, the Revolution was still in progress, and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette would be marched to the guillotine two years later. In 1791, Mozart completed The Magic Flute, his last opera, and died later that year at the age of 35, but the 20-year-old Beethoven was already being noticed.

Morse was educated at Yale and studied art in London. ...