Samuel Morse was born in Charleston, Mass. on April 27th 1791 and died in 1872 in New York City. Because his father was a minister, he lived in a religious family that had a good deal of influence on him as he grew up. Even as a boy Samuel had a real gift for art. .
Morse greatly helped form the National Academy of Design and was their first president. He went to Yale and studied chemistry with Benjamin Silliman and natural philosophy with Benjamin Day. Both professors lectured on the science of electricity. Although Morse worked on chemistry and built a few batteries in his spare time, his real passion was art. He graduated from Yale in 1810. .
He wanted to study art, but his father did not share his passion. After countless effort of begging and pleading, his father reluctantly agreed to let him study art. His first and only sculpture was of a dying Hercules. He finished it in 1813 and got a gold medal in the Adelphi society of art competition. In 1815 he was forced to return home because of lack of money. In 1822, though he had good success in art he still struggled financially. After numerous failures in painting he was forced to shift his attention to inventing. 1837 marked the end of his painting career. .
Of Morse's many different inventions, the telegraph was by far the most successful. When he was at Yale it always was the electricity that interested him, not the chemistry. He had no money to spend on his inventions so he used whatever he could find. Despite his inexperience in chemistry, he refused to give up. By the end of 1837, with the help of a professor in chemistry at Yale, named Leonard Gale, Morse had built an electromagnetic telegraph based on Joseph Henry's work. The telegraph could send messages 10 miles through wire and the distance was advancing quickly. A key helper in inventing the telegraph was Albert Vail, who was a skilled mechanic and owned a machine shop.
