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Title: Samuel F. B. Morse: Inventor and Code Creator (Spirit of America-Our People) by Judy Alter ISBN: 1-56766-446-6 Publisher: Childs World Pub. Date: March, 2003 Format: School & Library Binding Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.07

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: The story of Samuel Morse from painter to inventor
Comment: The story of Samuel Finley Breese Morse explains how a promising tramp painter, who did portraits of John Adams, James Monroe, and the Marquis de Lafayette, became the inventor of the telegraph. Young readers will learn from this juvenile biography by Judy Alter for the Our People series that the catalyst for this unusual transformation was a combination of tragedy and fortune. The former was the death of Morse's wife, which led him to live in Europe for several years, and the later was a conversation he overheard on the boat returning to the United States about electricity traveling in an instant over electric wire of any length. From that idea Morse eventually created the code that bears his name and the invention that made him immortal.

What is most fascinating about this juvenile biography is that Alter gives a view of both Morse the struggling artist and Morse the struggling inventor. Think about it: besides Leonard Da Vinci, how many people have ever achieved some modicum of success in both the arts and sciences? The books in this series usually have informative sidebars in each chapter, and Alter provides one that tells the story of how the great American painte Benjamin West taught the young Morse how to draw. This contrasts nicely with the last two chapters of the book, which covers not only the series of steps by which the telegraph was invented but also what Morse had to go through to sell his invention to the government and the public.

Clearly Thomas Alva Edison is the most important inventor in American history, and while you can certainly come up with other scientist who created more important things than the telegraph (unless you consider Morse is the father of electronic mass communication), you will be hard pressed to come up with an more interesting biography than that of Samuel F. B. Morse. The volume is illustrated with several of Morse's paintings, although neither the "Dying Hercules" or "The House of Representatives" are depicted (the first represents the art lesson alluded to above and the second is probably his most famous work). There are also some photographs of some early electromagnetic devices. Alter makes it clear that Morse was not the only one to work on the telegraph, but he was the first to get it to work and the telegraphic code that bears his name was clearly his own invention.