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Morse’s lightning out-survived her, but not much longer. In May 1944, Allied armies were poised to advance on Rome and to land the largest invasion force in history on the beaches of Normandy. Yet on May 15, Congress paused to commemorate the opening of the country’s first telegraph line in the same month one hundred years earlier. On that astonishing occasion, Samuel F. B. Morse, in the chamber of the Supreme Court, had tapped out to Alfred Vail in Baltimore the text of Numbers 23: 23—“What hath God wrought!” The event was faithfully reenacted in 1944 with operators at the same places, and broadcast nationally over CBS and NBC. The Army Signal Corps and the Navy picked up the Washington-Baltimore message and transmitted it in two directions around the world.

Americans found many other ways of remembering. The Post Office Department issued a Morse commemorative stamp. The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an exhibition of Morse’s paintings. A new Liberty ship was launched, christened Samuel F. B. Morse. New York University dedicated a Morse Study Hall. Topical questions were posed to contestants on such popular radio quiz shows as Dr. I. Q., Double or Nothing, and Take It or Leave It: Which came first, the telegraph or the telephone?

At the time, some two hundred million telegraph messages were being sent annually in the United States. But the telephone and Teletype had already taken over much of the work of the telegraph. And after the war telegraphy largely disappeared as an important information technology. Western Union sent its last Morse telegram in 1960. Scores of transatlantic cables had been laid since Cyrus Field’s first success. But the last of them was abandoned in 1966, the insulated copper conducting wires giving way to digital fiber-optic cables of vast capacity capable of transmitting live TV and e-mail.

In the 1990s the U.S. military and coast guard phased out Morse code in their operations. Eliminating human watchkeepers, they replaced it with the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS), using satellites and computers. Commercial Morse in North America—dotdash messages between ships and coastal stations—ended in 1999.

In the new millennium, the code continues in use among radio amateurs. And it is being revived as a means of communication for persons who have little or no ability to move, or who cannot speak or sign—who are ventilator-dependent or who suffer from severe cerebral palsy or some other devastating impairment.

Documentation

In quoting printed and manuscript sources I have generally retained the spelling, punctuation, and typography of the originals. In fitting short quotations grammatically into my own sentences, however, I have occasionally had to capitalize or lowercase the first letter of the original.

The following abbreviations appear frequently in the documentation, representing the chief collections of primary material by and about Morse:

C: Ezra Cornell Papers, Cornell University Library

ELM: Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, ed. Edward Lind Morse, 2 vols. (1914; rpt. New York, 1973)

HORLB: Henry O’Reilly Letterbooks, New-York Historical Society

HORP: Henry O’Reilly Papers, New-York Historical Society

HORSB: Henry O’Reilly Scrapbooks, New-York Historical Society

LHL: Samuel F. B. Morse journal, Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, Mo. M:ORLB: Henry O’Reilly Letterbooks, New-York Historical Society

HORP: Henry O’Reilly Papers, New-York Historical Society

HORSB: Henry O’Reilly Scrapbooks, New-York Historical Society

LHL: Samuel F. B. Morse journal, Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, Mo. M:RLB: Henry O’Reilly Letterbooks, New-York Historical Society

HORP: Henry O’Reilly Papers, New-York Historical Society

HORSB: Henry O’Reilly Scrapbooks, New-York Historical Society

LHL: Samuel F. B. Morse journal, Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, Mo. M:: Samuel F. B. Morse Papers, Library of Congress. The abbreviation is followed by a number that indicates the relevant reel in the library’s microfilm edition. Thus