The Age of Invention: A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest by Holland Thompson

Author:Holland Thompson [Thompson, Holland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780686834564
Google: 2AgzAQAAMAAJ
Publisher: Glasgow, Brook
Published: 1921-01-15T00:48:58+00:00

That Morse was destined to be a painter seemed certain, and when, soon after graduating from Yale, he made the acquaintance of Washington Allston, an American artist of high standing, any doubts that may have existed in his mind as to his vocation were set at rest. Allston was then living in Boston, but was planning to return to England, where his name was well known, and it was arranged that young Morse should accompany him as his pupil. So in 1811 Morse went to England with Allston and returned to America four years later an accredited portrait painter, having studied not only under Allston but under the famous master, Benjamin West, and having met on intimate terms some of the great Englishmen of the time. He opened a studio in Boston, but as sitters were few, he made a trip through New England, taking commissions for portraits, and also visited Charleston, South Carolina, where some of his paintings may be seen today.

At Concord, New Hampshire, Morse met Miss Lucretia Walker, a beautiful and cultivated young woman, and they were married in 1818. Morse then settled in New York. His reputation as a painter increased steadily, though he gained little money, and in 1825 he was in Washington painting a portrait of the Marquis La Fayette, for the city of New York, when he heard from his father the bitter news of his wife's death in New Haven, then a journey of seven days from Washington. Leaving the portrait of La Fayette unfinished, the heartbroken artist made his way home.

Two years afterwards Morse was again obsessed with the marvels of electricity, as he had been in college. The occasion this time was a series of lectures on that subject given by James Freeman Dana before the New York Athenaeum in the chapel of Columbia College. Morse attended these lectures and formed with Dana an intimate acquaintance. Dana was in the habit of going to Morse's studio, where the two men would talk earnestly for long hours. But Morse was still devoted to his art; besides, he had himself and three children to support, and painting was his only source of income.

Back to Europe went Morse in 1829 to pursue his profession and perfect himself in it by three years' further study. Then came the crisis. Homeward bound on the ship Sully in the autumn of 1832, Morse fell into conversation with some scientific men who were on board. One of the passengers asked this question: "Is the velocity of electricity reduced by the length of its conducting wire?" To which his neighbor replied that electricity passes instantly over any known length of wire and referred to Franklin's experiments with several miles of wire, in which no appreciable time elapsed between a touch at one end and a spark at the other.

Here was a fact already well known. Morse must have known it himself. But the tremendous significance of that fact had never before occurred to him nor, so far as he knew, to any man.

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