History of Morse Code

The Morse code, invented by Samuel Finley Breese Morse, was an important landmark in the electrical communication system. Read on to understand more about the Morse code.

Though the necessary elements for constructing an electrical communication system were discovered in the early nineteenth century, it was only in the 1840s, that the first telegraphy system was invented by Samuel Finley Breese Morse in the United states, which was referred to as the Morse code. Samuel Morse, born on April 27, 1791, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, was a professional painter and the founder of the Royal Academy. He was inspired to work on electromagnets, after a discussion on his return voyage to America in 1832. Morse worked rigorously for constructing the telegraph, in partnership with Leonard Gail, a professor and Alfred Vail. In 1854, he received the patent for Morse code from the Supreme Court of United States. Prior to the Morse telegraphy system of communication, there were some electrical systems like, the English "Needle Telegraph", which were used as a means of communication in those times. However, the major drawback of these instruments were a complex configuration and a very slow system. Working of the Morse Code Samuel Morse designed the Morse code in such a way, that the letters of the alphabets and the ten numerals were represented by means of short and long pulses. Hence, according to the Morse code, each character of the alphabets, numerals and punctuation marks were assigned a pattern, unique to the particular character. As per the Morse code, an operator translated the short and long pulses (characteristic to the message being sent) into electrical signals with the help of a telegraph key. At the receiving end, a sophisticated operator translated the electrical signals back to the alphabetical and/or numeral characters (whichever were present in the message). This way, the Morse system of telegraphy conveyed a message electrically. On May 24, 1844, the first telegraph message 'What hath God wrought', was sent electrically from the Supreme Court chamber, in the US Capitol to the railway depot, Baltimore. Since the invention of the Morse code, it was popularly used as a standard means of communication both in the United States and European countries. In comparison to the electronic communication systems of those times, Morse code was advantageous in two ways; the easy working principle, and secondly, the ability to function efficiently, even with low quality wires. Nevertheless, a drawback of the Morse code was the use of characters for spaced dots, which was found to be the main cause of error for transmission, especially on undersea cables. By 1851, a new code, referred to as the international or continental code, was constructed by modifying the Morse code. In the new system, the characters for spaced dots were eliminated. The Morse code was then replaced with the new code in all telegraph systems, except in North America, where the original system was still used. The Morse code was used for over 160 years, which is comparatively longer than other coding systems. The basic difference between the Morse code and the presentday telegraph is that, in the former case, the codes for each character were sent via a single wire; whereas, a code for each letter is sent through a different wire in case of the telegraph. Other than the Morse code, Samuel Morse was the first inventor of fire engine pumps and marble-cutting machines. In 1871, the Telegraph honored Samuel Morse by dedicating a statue in Central Park, New York City. Samuel Morse died of pneumonia on April 2, 1872, in New York City, at the age of 80. Even though Samuel Morse is not a scientist by profession, today, the world remembers him as a great scientist and the inventor of the telegraph.

By Ningthoujam Sandhyarani

History Of Television Who is the inventor of television? You have really opened up a can of worms with that question! Probably no other invention in history has been so hotly disputed as the prestigious claim to the invention of 'Tele-vision or 'long-distance sight' by wireless. Since Marconis invention of wireless telegraphy in 1897, the imagination of many inventors have been sparked with the notion of sending images as well as sound, wirelessly. The first documented notion of sending components of pictures over a series of multiple circuits is credited to George Carey. Another inventor, W. E. Sawyer, suggested the possibility of sending an image over a single wire by rapidly scanning parts of the picture in succession. On December 2, 1922, in Sorbonne, France, Edwin Belin, an Englishman, who held the patent for the transmission of photographs by wire as well as fiber optics and radar, demonstrated a mechanical scanning device that was an early precursor to modern television. Belins machine took flashes of light and directed them at a selenium element connected to an electronic device that produced sound waves. These sound waves could be received in another location and remodulated into flashes of light on a mirror. Up until this point, the concept behind television was established, but it wasnt until electronic scanning of imagery (the breaking up of images into tiny points of light for transmission over radio waves), was invented, that modern television received its start. But here is where the controversy really heats up. The credit as to who was the inventor of modern television really comes down to two different people in two different places both working on the same problem at about the same time: Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, a Russian-born American inventor working for Westinghouse, and Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a privately backed farm boy from the state of Utah. Zworykin had a patent, but Farnsworth had a picture Zworykin is usually credited as being the father of modern television. This was because the patent for the heart of the TV, the electron scanning tube, was first applied for by Zworykin in 1923, under the name of an iconoscope. The iconoscope was an electronic image scanner - essentially a primitive television camera. Farnsworth was the first of the two inventors to successfully demonstrate the transmission of television signals, which he did on September 7, 1927, using a scanning tube of his own design. Farnsworth received a patent for his electron scanning tube in 1930. Zworykin was not able to duplicate Farnsworths achievements until 1934 and his patent for a scanning tube was not issued until 1938. The truth of the matter is this, that while Zworykin applied for the patent for his iconoscope in 1923, the invention was not functional until some years later and all earlier efforts were of such poor quality that Westinghouse officials ordered him to work on something more useful. Another player of the times was John Logie Baird, a Scottish engineer and entrepreneur who 'achieved his first transmissions of

simple face shapes in 1924 using mechanical television. On March 25, 1925, Baird held his first public demonstration of 'television' at the London department store Selfridges on Oxford Street in London. In this demonstration, he had not yet obtained adequate half-tones in the moving pictures, and only silhouettes were visible.' - MZTV In the late thirties, when RCA and Zworykin, who was now working for RCA, tried to claim rights to the essence of television, it became evident that Farnsworth held the priority patent in the technology. The president of RCA sought to control television the same way that they controlled radio and vowed that, RCA earns royalties, it does not pay them, and a 50 million dollar legal battle subsequently ensued. In the height of the legal battle for patent priority, Farnsworths high school science teacher was subpoenaed and traveled to Washington to testify that as a 14 year old, Farnsworth had shared his ideas of his television scanning tube with his teacher. With patent priority status ruled in favor of Farnsworth, RCA for the first time in its history, began paying royalties for television in 1939. Philo Farnsworth was recently named one of TIME Magazine's 100 Greatest Scientists and Thinkers of the 20th Century.