Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 - April 2, 1872) was an American contributor to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs, co-inventor of the Morse code, and an accomplished painter. He graduated from Yale in 1810, visited England to study painting, returning in 1815 to earn his living as a portrait painter. In 1832, after having been helped by the American physicist J. Henry, he had the idea of a design for the electric telegraph. In 1844 the first telegraph line, about 65km long, was completed linking Washington to Baltimore. The first message sent by Morse was "What hath God wrought"; it was sent in a code of dots and dashes, the Morse code, which he had devised in 1838. There is an argument amongst historians that Morse may have received the idea of a plausible telegraph from Harrison Gray Dyar and he never acknowledged the help received by J. Henry. He was a leader in the anti-Catholic and anti-immigration movement of the mid-19th century. Morse died of pneumonia in 1872, 25 days short of his 81st birthday.
