Samuel F. B. Morse

Artist / Inventor

Name at birth: Samuel Finley Breese Morse

Samuel Morse's first career was as an artist, painting portraits in Boston and New York. In 1832 he became one of several people interested in finding ways of communicating by sending electrical impulses across a wire -- a concept which became known as the telegraph. Morse developed a dot-and-dash alphabet and devised a practical plan for using telegraphy to communicated across great distances. Morse demonstrated a working model in 1837, and by 1843 had secured government funding to run a line from Baltimore, Maryland to Washington, D.C. On May 24, 1844 he transmitted the first telegraph message: "What hath God wrought!" Although he spent years in litigation over telegraph patents, he was eventually rewarded for his efforts and was a wealthy man in his later years.

Extra credit: Morse was also an early photographer and created some of America's first daguerreotypes... The emergency call SOS -- dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot -- is a famous Morse code combination.