The Secret to Samuel Morse and His Electric Telegraph
"There is nothing now left for invention to achieve but to discover new before it takes place," a reporter on the New York Herald reported in 1844. The journalist was referring to the electric telegraph, an invention borne of the Industrial Revolution that transformed how the American West was 'won.' In the space of twenty years the telegraph became the standard means of communication for all the disparate elements in this vast landscape. Suddenly soldier, rancher and railroad operator could send messages long distance in minutes through copper wires strung up on poles that snaked across the landscape like a rash. By 1861 the Pony Express, on which the nation had relied, had been consigned to history. And one man in particular, Samuel Morse, had become very wealthy. It was his single circuit telegraph system that was installed across the country, and his name that is inextricably linked worldwide with its invention. Yet Nineteenth Century archives reveal numerous ex