This Day in History: 1791-04-27

Samuel Morse is born on this day in 1791. The painter and inventor created the single wire telegraph system and  Morse Code.  Motivated by the death of his wife in Connecticut while he was away in Washington DC, Morse spent many years pondering the issue of rapid communication at a distance.  Although previous electric  telegraph systems had been developed before the debut of Morse’s telegraph system,  its simplicity and flexibility led to widespread adoption.   Morse wanted the telegraph to be administered through a US government agency. “It is obvious, at the slightest glance, that this mode of instantaneous communication must inevitably become an instrument of immense power, to be wielded for good or for evil …” he said in 1838, which was about seven years before its widespread adoption.  Morse wanted his invention to follow that path that  Louis Daguerre took with his invention of photography, which was to keep it out of the hands of a private monopoly.  However, by the 1860s, the American telegraph system had fallen into a monopolistic pattern.