Talk:Samuel Morse

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2004-5 review

This page needs MAJOR work. First off there's very little mention of Morses primary career as a painter, and no mention of his membership in the Hudson River School. Someone with more aret history knowledge about it should at least add a few sentences. The "Middle Years" passage is just awful. The first paragraph is nearly incomprehensible. What does it mean that Morse "adopted magnetism to electromagnetic telegraphy, and a signaling alphabet known as Morse Code in his sketchbook during conversations with Dr. Charles T. Jackson."? Why is Jackson mentioned by name? Why should we care? It also, without citation and in non-professional language, states that Morse did not invent the electric telegraph or AN electric telegraph, yet the article goes on to talk about his invention of AN electric telegraph a few paragraphs later. The second paragraph isn't much better. Aside from some very awkward language, such as telegraphs being "enhanced" rather than improved, we're confronted with the name of Claude Chappe with no context as to who he is or why we should care. If we're going to do a micro-history of telegraphy to contextualize Morse's work then we need to do it right. We jump right from a discussion of the early optical telegraph to another, unsourced, denial of Morse's invention of the ELECTRIC telegraph. The word "ignorant" in the sentence is too judgmental. There's several mangled sentences in here. Morse doesn't acknowledge not to have "inventor have invented" the electric telegraph. Then there's another non-sequitor jump to a patent trial. In addition the section in general jumps around in time. We go from his inventing the code, to a general history of telegraphy, to his personal life in 1830, back to his work on telegraphs. In addition there seems to be very little or no talk on the page about the significance of Morse code. _{unsigned statement from 2003}

Okay I deleted the first three paragraphs from the "middle years" section. They seem to be the problematic ones. If someone wants to put that information back they should make the language much more professional and provide citations for it.

Darn. Sorry that you did that Mav. I'm going to be adding a good bit of it back, a bit at a time so that it reads better. That text is NOT a copyright violation. It's from "Hero's of the Telegraph" by Munro, which is a Project Gutenberg book. Globusz is just posting an html-ified version of the Gutenberg e-text, which the stuff you deleted was. :-( Meanwhile, I intend to expand this article substantially over the next several weeks. (BTW - Hero's of the telegraph is extensively quoted in a LOT of the technology of communications articles... old fashioned and etc, but a lot of useful text there. It was the basis for most of the Telephone article before we started cleaning it up last year.) Rick Boatright 03:21, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Much of this text is a several month old copyright violation from:

http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Telegraph/00000013.htm

I have removed this text (it was way too long and wordy anyway). --mav

Isn't he more commonly known as Samuel F. B. Morse? -- Zoe

I'm no expert, but I don't remember ever seeing him referred to that way. Tokerboy

The official historic site at http://www.morsehistoricsite.org/morse/morse.html calls him Samuel Morse on the front page, but Samuel F. B. Morse on their biography page. -- Zoe

Actually, Samuel Finley Breese Morse is almost always referred to as Samuel F. B. Morse, or sometimes, Samuel FB Morse. [[User:Ortolan88|Ortolan88]

I have a text saying that Morse sent his first Morse code message in 1844. Greenmountainboy 00:02, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Telegraph message was before Morse code, I have updated the page dml 00:53, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)\

thanks, i wasn't sure if that was the case. Greenmountainboy 02:14, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Mav, the old text was not a copyvio. It was from the book Heroes of the Telegraph by John Munro, available at Project Gutenberg: [1]. Lupo 14:07, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

=== intro sentence? (January 2005)==--

The revision on 18:06, 6 Jan 2005 by User:Bkell ([2]) changed the introduction from

"... was an American inventor, history and portrait painter, and is most famous for ..."

to

"... was an American inventor, historian, and portrait painter; he is most famous for ..."

This is a subtle change in meaning, and I cannot really see his contributions as historian, but his history painter role is quite clear. Shouldn't it be changed back? --Dewet 11:09, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maybe "painter of portraits and historical scenes"? Gene Nygaard 12:40, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree that its probably the best construction. I'll change it back. --Dewet 06:07, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

you should mention F O.J Smith

He was a thorn in the side of MOrse for a long time. He may or may not have sued him over copyrights. Smith was a congressman from Maine. They were partners for a while.

"Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States" by Samuel FB Morse

Is this under copyright? Does anyone have access to the text?

Morse code pic?

Do we really need that pic of the morse code at the very bottom of the article where it seems to do nothing? Thanx 69.142.2.68 15:12, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Catagories

Why are there revisions being made to the catagory "scottish-American"? There doesn't apear to be any discussion about it.glocks out 17:42, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Made changes on INVENTION of Telegraph

To me an inventor is someone who comes up with the science, and at least the prototype of the invention. Morse did neither. He claimed he did on his trial but no papers were put forth to back this.

My edit was as follows:

It is disputed whether Morse had invented the electrical telegraph in 1837. Joseph Henry, working what today is Princeton University, was the first with the prototype. Henry also had scientific papers, which Morse could not produce even when he was sued--Morse vs. O'Reilly. During the patent trial, Morse's lawyer claimed that the scientific papers that Morse put in writing with his own hand, were burned in a recent fire. Joseph Henry was the open source promoter of the time and Morse took advantage of the openness and patented the devices in 1837.''

The problem stems from using Britannica as a source, because they have it wrong as well. The most recent discussion on this can be taken from the new book Electric Universe : The Shocking True Story of Electricity (among many other sources) by David Bodanis.

Perhaps the distinction should also be made from the "needle" telegraph (Schilling and Wheatstone).GraemeLeggett 09:30, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But don't books on Henry say he demonstrated his device could ring a bell at a great distance while he was still at Albany Institute before taking a job at Princeton? And I have not found a source saying that Henry devised a time-base code to send messages other than a bell ringing at a time of his choice. Certainly anyone with a code such as Morse code could have sent a message for miles with the Henry device which preceded any work by Morse. Edison 16:08, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anti-Catholic

Someone (a better writer than me) should discuss Morse's Anti-Catholic viewpoints. They were nasty- he would have denied citizenship to foreign born catholics, and he disliked foreigners in general. It was this facet of his life that got him involved in politics (much to his disadvantage) running for office on the Know-Nothing ticket. I don't mean to fling mud at a man with many admirable qualities but he had a nasty side.--Saxophobia 00:11, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

2006 what God has wrought

The passage
On May 24, 1844 Morse sent the telegraph message "What hath God wrought" (a Bible quotation, Numbers 23:23) from the Supreme Court room in Washington, D.C. to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Seems to be of interest only fans of Morse, not for an encyclopaedic overview. Any comments? --Flammingo^Parliament 14:16, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WHA-?!

Where's the content?! It's blank!

Removed line about killing by a hacksaw

This seemed like vandalism and it was written by someone that had already been in trouble for vandalism, so I removed it. I couldn't find any reference to it anywhere else. If I was wrong someone should fix it with a reference. Though it seems pretty outlandish. --jdabney 01:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do we have any evidence that Morse's body was dug out of his grave or used for science?

Grave robbers?

Do we have any evidence Morse's body was dug out of his grave or used for science?

Chaywood 12:25, 9 May 2007 (UTC)Chaywood[reply]

Vandalism

Just editted to remove some vandalism.

"Do not Edit this or Expect the consequences" - removed. And Section title recorrected.

--Niall9 16:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]