In 1825 he helped found the National Academy of Design in New York, and the following year he became the first president of the institution. He continued his painting and became a professor of painting and sculpture at New York University in 1832. At about that time he became interested in chemical and electrical experiments and developed apparatus for an electromagnetic telegraph that he completed in 1836.
The following year he filed a caveat, or legal notice, at the Patent Office in Washington, D.C., and tried without success to obtain European patents for his apparatus. He also invented a code, now known as the Morse code, for use with his telegraph instrument.
In 1843 the Congress of the United States appropriated US$30,000 for Morse to construct an experimental telegraph line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland.
The line was successfully installed, and on May 24, 1844, Morse sent the first message: “What hath God wrought!” Morse was subsequently involved in much litigation over his claim to the invention of the telegraph, and the courts decided in his favour. He received many honours. Later he experimented with submarine cable telegraphy. Morse died in New York on April 2, 1872.
Bell, Alexander Graham (1847-1922), British-born American inventor and teacher of the deaf, most famous for his invention of the telephone. Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, and was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London. He emigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the United States in 1871. In the United States he began teaching deaf mutes, publicizing the system called visible speech.
The system, which was developed by his father, the Scottish educator Alexander Melville Bell, shows how the lips, tongue, and throat are used in the articulation of sound. In 1872 Bell founded a school for deaf mutes in Boston, Massachusetts. The school subsequently became part of Boston University, where Bell was appointed Professor of Vocal Physiology. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1882.
Since the age of 18 Bell had been working on the idea of transmitting speech. In 1874, while working on a multiple telegraph, he developed the basic ideas for the telephone. His experiments with his assistant Thomas Watson finally proved successful on March 10, 1876, when the first complete sentence was transmitted: “Watson, come here; I want you”. Subsequent demonstrations, particularly one at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, introduced the telephone to the world and led to the organization of the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.
Vin Iun 06, 2008 11:21 am
