Results: Samuel Morse's grief gave birth to long-distance communication

(Source: Curiosity.com) Before Samuel Morse became known for the code that bears his name, he was a portrait painter. Soon after setting up an art studio in Boston in 1815, Morse married Lucretia Walker. Lucretia died in 1825 after giving birth to the couple's third child. She fell seriously ill while Morse was away working on a painting commission. By the time he made it back home, she had already been buried. On top of that, the next year, his father died. Three years after that, his mother died. Have you lost more than one loved one in a short period of time?

After all this heartbreak, Morse began contemplating telegraphy. If he would've received news of his wife's illness sooner, he could've made it back in time to be with her before she passed. The solution could have been in the wires. The telegraph had already been in invented in 1774, but the impractical device used 26 bulky wires to transmit messages. Morse developed a way to send messages over a single wire and created a "language" - Morse code, a system of long and short signals - to go with it. Have you ever seen how a telegraph used to work?

The phrase "What hath God wrought?" it's a line that changed the course of history. This was the first message ever transmitted over telegraph wires. Samuel Morse created this technology out of his own grief. He received a patent for his telegraph invention in 1844. He was able to secure funding from Congress to build wires across the United States. On May 24th of that year, he telegraphed his famous message from Baltimore to Washington. The technology rapidly caught on with ordinary people too. Did you know what motivated him to design the Morse code before this survey?

Which is the most important device or tool for you to establish long distance communications?