ReMaking History, Volume 3

Chapter 2 Samuel Morse and the Telegraph

Prior to Samuel F. B. Morse’s invention of the electric telegraph, there was no good way to communicate information across distance at any speed greater than that of a horserider. Sure, there were some limited experiments. Men holding flags called semaphores stood on hilltops and noted one another’s coded movements through spyglasses. This was clumsy and slow. Worse, it was incredibly expensive because it required a lot of men on a lot of hilltops to relay messages over any substantial distance.

In the 1820s and early 1830s, Samuel F. B. Morse was well known as an accomplished painter; he was praised ...