Samuel Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1791 and went on to study at Yale College and then in London. He became a portrait painter, but in 1832, on board a ship travelling back to America, he started to design an electric telegraph. In 1837 he gave the first demonstration of his invention at New York University. By 1844 he had been awarded a grant to further his work and set up a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington. His name is given to the code he devised using dots and dashes to send signals on his equipment.
