Samuel Morse

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of a minister and geographer. He studied at Yale and became a painter, studying in London and painting portraits of figures such as Lafayette. In 1825, while he was in Washington painting, his wife died at home in New Haven; the letter bringing the news took days to reach him, and she was buried before he arrived. On a voyage home from Europe in 1832 he talked with a fellow passenger about electromagnetism and began to think about sending messages by electricity. With help from the scientist Joseph Henry's work and his partners Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, he built a working telegraph and a code of dots and dashes for letters and numbers. Congress paid for a line from Washington to Baltimore, and on 24 May 1844 Morse sent the message What hath God wrought, a phrase from the Bible. Telegraph lines soon crossed the country and the oceans. Morse also helped found Vassar College. He died in New York in 1872.

Faith: Son of a Calvinist preacher; he was a Protestant who campaigned against Catholic influence in America. Source: Wikipedia