Does anyone still learn – or use – Morse Code anymore? I ask because Samuel F.B. Morse, the who is (incorrectly) credited with inventing the telegraph, is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday, a 2-cent stamp issued on October 7, 1940 as part a series of 35 stamps honoring “Great Americans.”

Born in Charlestown, MA Morse attended Yale College where he studied religious philosophy, mathematics, and the science of horses. He frequently attended lectures on electricity and supported himself by painting. Morse’s painting ability proved to be a true talent and in 1811, he was recruited to travel to England to study at the Royal Academy. He was particularly inspired by the works of Michelangelo and Raphael and produced a number of impressive paintings. Morse then returned to America in 1815 to begin his career as a full-time painter.

Over the next 10 years, Morse painted several major figures, including Presidents John Adams and James Monroe. In 1825, while painting the Marquis de Lafayette, he received a letter by horse messenger from his father telling him that his wife was very ill. The next day, he received another letter saying that she had died. By the time he returned home, she’d already been buried. Morse was distraught over the loss and upset that he hadn’t received the news of her poor health sooner. He then resolved to find a faster means of long-distance communication.

Morse continued painting and traveling, leading him to meet an expert in electromagnetism in 1832. After witnessing his experiments with electromagnets, Morse developed the idea of the single-wire telegraph but couldn’t get a telegraphic signal to carry over more than a few hundred yards of wire. His breakthrough came from the insights of Professor Leonard Gale, who taught chemistry at New York University. With the help of Gale and a young man named Alfred Vail, Morse introduced extra circuits or relays at frequent intervals and was soon able to send a message through ten miles of wire. This was the great breakthrough he had been seeking. Morse received a patent for his system in 1837, though he had to go the Supreme Court to secure the financial rewards from that patent (in a seminal 1857 ruling that is still the basis of patent law as it relates to 21st century information technology).

Morse and sent his first telegram on January 11, 1838, across two miles of wire. But over the next few years, he was unable to secure public or private support for his invention. Finally, in 1843, Congress appropriated $30,000 in 1843 for construction of an experimental 38-mile telegraph line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. On May 24, 1844, his telegraph, which could transmit 30 characters per minute, the line was officially opened as Morse sent the now-famous words, “What hath God wrought,” from the Supreme Court chamber in the basement of the U.S. Capitol building, to the B&O’s Mount Clare Station in Baltimore. The next year, the Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed to build telegraph lines from New York City toward Philadelphia; Boston; Buffalo, New York; and the Mississippi. Telegraphic lines rapidly spread throughout the United States and by 1850 12,000 miles of wire had been laid. Morse later worked on a trans-Atlantic cable, which was put into service in 1858. (Lest we engage in too much hero-worship of Morse, it’s also important to note that in the 1850s he was a well-known defender of slavery and in the 1830s he was active in supporter of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant political movements.)

Morse and Vail also created Morse Code, a “dot and dash” system used to send information through the telegraph’s clicking sounds. And for over 100 years, the Morse Code was a basic form of communication. I believe my father had to learn it when he became a radio-man with a reconnaissance unit in Europe during World War II (though, I’m not sure he used it). And in the late 60s and early 70s, when I was a Boy Scout, to get to the rank of First-Class Scout, you had to “send and receive a message of at least 20 words, using either international Morse or semaphore codes and necessary procedure signals” to become a First Class Scout. My good friend Jake Levine fulfilled this requirement by writing out the entire roster of the New York Rangers in Morse Code.

I learned many useful skills as a Boy Scout, such as how to hike and camp in environmentally sensitive ways, how to work with others, and how to get a group to take on and carry out a shared task. But I have to say that I’ve never had occasion to use the Morse Code that I had to learn as a Boy Scout. (And, in fairness, the Scouts dropped the Morse Code requirement in 1972.)
So I return to my opening question. Did anyone else learn Morse Code when they were growing up and, more interestingly, has anyone ever had occasion to use it?

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and work for peace.