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CLASSIC: The Tragic Origin Story of Morse Code · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to this week's classic episode, fellow Ridiculous Historians.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: This one, to be quite honest with you, is going
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: to take some unexpected dark turns. Max, did you ever
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: learn Morse code?
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: God? Nopppep bepepepep right.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I might have just said something very dirty, or I
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: might have said nothing, probably the latter, but that something.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Morse code is going to be familiar to a
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: certain contingent of our fellow Ridiculous historians. It is a
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: useful thing to know. No, it is maybe not as
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: common now as it used to be back in the day,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: but the evolution of communication across the planet owes a
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: lot to the telegraph and to Morse code. This revolutionize
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the way people transmit information. In today's classic episod, so
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: we are going to explore the life and times of
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: the man who invented the code in the first place,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: a guy named Samuel Morse. Again, we cannot emphasize this enough.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: This is kind of a bummer. Ridiculous History is a
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Noel, did you ever have to learn
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Morse Code?
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: No? God, that was not a very interesting response. Let
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: me make something up. Yeah, totally. When I was in
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: cub Scouts and we went on a camping trip into
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: the wilderness, so we had to learn how to communicate
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: by tapping tree bark. Yeah, exactly, totally.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Well. When I was back in Boy Scouts, one of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the things that our troop leaders continually needled me about.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: They're always like, Ben, you're good at knots, you can
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: find a way around in the woods. But you you
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: got to learn Morse code, buddy. It's just it's been
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: too long, you know what I mean. You're eleven, now
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: it's getting real. You got to learn Morse code. And
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: so eventually I learned Morse code, passed the test with it,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and then promptly forgot it.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you turn eleven, you get your first big
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: boy bike and you learn Morse code, right.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Right, And that's for late bloomers, not for early adopters
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: like our super producer Casey Pegram. Give them a hand, folks.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Today's episode is about Morse code, but more importantly, it's
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: about the Man himself.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: That's right, the Morseman, the Morsemen, not to be confused
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: with some sort of norseman.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: No, No, that's a hard mus Yes, yeah.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the man, the myth, the Morseman.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: The Morseman, Samuel Morseman morse So Samuel Moose born in
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: April twenty seventh, seventeen ninety one. Today he is remembered
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: primarily for the code system that bears his name, morse Code.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: And everyone knows what that is. Casey, could we get
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: just a little clip of how that would sound? You know?
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Perfect?
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: So like a series of short beats and then long ones.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you're really good at it, you can
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: do it. You know, I would do it more like
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: dot dot dash dot dot Dad. But if you're really
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: good and you can work one of those little flipper
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: paddle button things, you know that you see in the
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: old movies, you'd be more like brererep you know what
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I mean. Like that's Morse code. A telegraph, Yeah, telegraph,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: which he's also credited with. He didn't really invent it exactly,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: but he improved upon a previous design and made it
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: much more useful in relaying information more or less instantaneously. Yeah.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: That's the thing. So most inventions that we think of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: as the huge game changing innovations, most of those are
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: not going to be made up by one person working
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: in isolation. You know what I mean multiple people exhibit
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: parallel thinking. It's a phrase you enjoy or you.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Know, the whole idea of standing on the shoulders of
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: giants and all that and improving, piggybacking on something that
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: has come before and making it better and making it
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: suit the times.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct. He he eventually improved, as you said,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: on this existing telegraph technology, famously sending the first telegraph
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: message on May twenty fourth, eighteen forty four. But between
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: his first day on the planet and that moment where
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: he sends the first telegraph message, a lot of stuff happened,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: and not all of it was particularly pleasant. In fact,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: we could say that without great personal tragedy, Morse code
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: may not have ever come to be and.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Know and that first telegraph messag is that Morese sent
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: a little heavy, inn't it. It's a what hath God wrought?
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: That sounds sinister to me.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I like it. It's better than ahoi hoi.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: That's true, ahoihoi, which was what famously mister Burns sent
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: on the first ever telephone call.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Right right so before Samuel Morse was known for his inventions,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: way back when Morse was just a regular surname. This
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: guy had a completely different job, didn't.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: He He did. He went to Yale and when he
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: graduated was his degree in ben Did you catch that well?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: He studied several different things. He studied religious philosophy, mathematics,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: and equestrian science.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Which is so interesting because he went into none of
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: those fields. Upon graduating from Yale, he became a quite
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: well regarded portrait paint and a piece that he did
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: I was not aware of this at all. His work
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: is pretty breathtaking. He has one piece called Dying Hercules
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: that has that kind of Caravaggio asque look of like
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: some of the Italian masters, like real charscuro lighting like
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: this dude is heavily ripped, massive pectorals and eight pack
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: kind of back in the throes of agony, leaning up
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: against some rocks as hercules holding up this kind of
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: like sheet as though were like a wing. And it's
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: really breathtaking, epic stuff. And he received some note from
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: that work and got some really pretty big name commissions
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: as a painter.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: It's interesting because this was a masterpiece early in his life.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: It's typically called his early masterpiece. And just a side note,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: he did a sculpture of this first and he based
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the painting on that sculpture.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: That's pretty weird, right, I wasn't aware of that technique,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: but I assume it's a common thing because this guy
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: was a big deal painter. He he ended up attracting
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the attention of notable artists of the time, such as
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Washington Alston, who wanted him to meet another artist named
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Benjamin West and along with Morse's father, Alston arranged for
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Morse to stay in England for three years to study painting,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: and eventually, by the end of eighteen eleven he was
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: admitted to the Royal Academy and this is where he
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: began producing things like dying hercules. He has some portraits
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: that are in the National Portrait Gallery now, including a
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: self portrait.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I believe he did one of James Madison
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: as well, and he was commissioned to paint a portrait
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: of the Marquis de Lafayette in Washington in February of
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: eighteen twenty five. Oh, we also did John Adams and
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: James Monroe. And that was when, unfortunately, tragically, his wife
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Lucretia fell deathly ill.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, she fell ill just a month after giving birth
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: to their third child, and she was located in new Haven, Connecticut,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: and he was in Washington in February of eighteen twenty
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: five painting that portrait. So he dropped everything ran back
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: to New Haven as quickly as he could. Unfortunately, he
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: was too late, and his wife passed at the young
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: age of twenty five on February seventh, eighteen twenty five.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: And at this point the only way that he could
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: receive notice of this would be through a written correspondence,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: a letter through the post, or word of mouth, or
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: maybe somebody sending a courier, you know what I mean,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and Corvid of some kind, Yes, a Corvid courier. So
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: his father sent him a letter about his wife's illness,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: and more did not receive this letter for several days.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: He wrote to his wife two days after she had died,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: unaware that she had passed from this earth, and he
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: was talking to her about the election of John Quincy
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Adams as president, his meeting with Lafayette, and then by
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the time he returned to New Haven, several days had
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: passed since her burial.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: What would have been from Washington, DC to New Haven,
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Connecticut in those days, which would have been by train.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: How do you have traveled?
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I wonder it's an interesting question. So the distance, if
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: you're talking just a straight flight, the distance would be
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: about Testain Corbett flies, Yeah, two hundred and seventy three
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: miles or four hundred and forty kilometers for the rest
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: of the world. So just for perspective, if someone were
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: traveling on a train today on Amtrak, for instance, how
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: long would that journey take?
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I think only about five and a half hours or so,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: which kind of threw me because at first I when
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: I read this, I misread and thought he was much
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: farther away because he had spent a lot of time overseas,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: but he was in fact not that far, but still
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: just the same, he needed the information instantly, and that
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: is what led him to decide he needed to devise
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: a way of doing this so other people wouldn't have
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: to experience what he experienced, because he wrote a letter
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: to his daughter after the passing of his wife that
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: was just really heartbreaking to read.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Right, he said, you cannot know the depth of the
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: wound that was inflicted when I was deprived of your
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: dear mother, nor in how many ways that wound has
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: been kept open and when he learned of their death,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: he vowed to find some way to deliver important messages
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: in a timely manner, and he would spend the next
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: two decades perfecting this system.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: He didn't give up the art right away, but he
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: continued kind of tinkering away at this side hush at
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: the same time. And it was in eighteen thirty two,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: when he was on another voyage sea voyage to Europe.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: From Europe rather back to the United States, that he
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: met a very important gentleman for the evolution of what
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: would be his kind of crowning achievement.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, Charles Thomas Jackson, a Boston physician and scientist. And
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Jackson says to Morse, hey, check out this electromagnet I made.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: He had a rudimentary electromagnet, and Morse was inspired. And
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Morse thought, you know what, what if I could send
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: a message along a wire by opening and closing an
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: electrical circuit, and then an electro magnet could record these
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: blips on a piece of paper via some sort of
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: dare I say a code? And I like your thinking,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: yeah right, And this is one of those I don't
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: know at first. It's like a cocktail Napkin idea. You know,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: he's still what iffing to himself. But when he goes
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: back to the US, when he disembarks from the trip,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: he moves forward with the idea and he meets another
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: guy who works with electromagnets, a fellow named Joseph Henry.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Joseph Henry was also working with the idea
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: of electromagnetism, which is just quick and dirty. I'm no
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: magnet scientist, but it is the idea of passing electric
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: current into a magnet that turns on and off its
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: magnetic abilities, right, Yeah.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I mean I'm not a magnet doctor either, but I
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: like that phrase. But yeah, that's the basic gist. At
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: this time, Morse still doesn't absolutely understand the nuts and
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: bolts of how electro magnetism works. And it is Henry
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: who explains the phenomenon of electromagnetism to Morse, and he
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: also shows him the experimental electromagnets that he has built.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: And if you look at the electromagnets Morse later goes
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: on to use and the experimental ones that Joseph Henry created,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: they're obviously the same design. He's well, you don't want
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: to call it plagiarism. But he's riffing well, but he
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: did sue, I believe, yeah, yeah, later he did sue
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and said, hey, that's my idea. You can you can
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: read some of this, by the way, in a fantastic
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Smithsonian article called How Samuel Morse Got His Big Idea
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: by Joseph Stromberg, And the Smithsonian has written a couple
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: of things about the story of Morse because I don't
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: remember if we've mentioned this on area yet. Joseph Henry
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: would later go on to become the first Secretary of
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: the Smithsonian Institution. They have a little bit of stake
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: in the game here story wise. So before he gets sued,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Morse and Henry are pretty good buds. They're having interesting conversations.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Morse goes back to his home, which is now in
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: New York, and in eighteen thirty seven he creates his
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: first telegraph receiver.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: It's, like I said, is kind of that thing you
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: see in some of these old, the old pictures where
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: it's like a button exactly on a spring and that
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: clopens and closes the circuit to the decay. Yeah, when
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: you need the taps, that's right, And that is pretty
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: much what it looked like and it got sort of
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: streamlined over time, and you can actually see this first
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: ever version, this prototype today at the American History Museum.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: And according to Harold Wallace, the curator of the American
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: History Museum, the most interesting aspect of this is that
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: he took an artist canvas stretcher and made it into
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: a telegraph receiver. A canvas stretcher is what you use
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: to stretch the canvas over a frame and a fixation.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: So he was kind of given props to his old
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: arts roots.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And to Wallace, this is symbolic of a shift from
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: painter to telegrapher, all in one piece, one artifact. That's
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: pretty cool, somewhat poetic. Right. So now he theoretically has
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: a way to record these signals, and he has to
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: figure out how to transmit them. Right. Yeah, he builds
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the receiver first, but he doesn't build a way to
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: transmit it.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: So was the infrastructure already in place for this, because
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I mean this is obviously pre telephone.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Right, He had to work with some other people and
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: this is where his colleagues Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: come into play. Over the next few years, after building
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: this receiver, Morse, still, a man on a mission, works
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: to improve this system, and he uses Veil's transmitter key
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and a code of dots and dashes. This would be
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: what becomes known as Morse code. And initially people said, okay,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: it could be potentially useful, but they had a hard
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: time getting investors because of the infrastructure problem that you
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: alluded to earlier. There's not a pre existing network of
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: miles and miles and miles of wire. You would have
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: to build it to send that signal. And that's something
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: that we see with a lot of technology. One of
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the things people are talking about today with autonomous vehicles
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: is how do you build a system in which they
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: can exist?
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: That's right, and so in the same way that we're
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: doing small scale tests of autonomous vehicles in private in
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: these private companies and then gradually doing road tests, some
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: of which have spectacularly failed, they did that very thing
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: to demonstrate to potential investors that this technology did work
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: using short runs of wires instead of the kind that
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: would have been strung miles and miles apart to make
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: the technology actually useful across long distances.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a part of the story that I found
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: endearing they turned to Uncle Sam. They asked the US
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: government for some scratch, some cheddar, some sweet sweet telegraph
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: money just to construct this network, to lay these lines,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: to make this wire stuff happen. And the way that
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: they convinced the government to fund it was through this
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: sort of science fair approach. They did a live demonstration
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: within the Capitol and they strung wires up just between
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: different rooms.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: You know what makes me think of there's a part
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: in the new Red Dead Redemption game where the character
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: you play, the cowboy I can't remember his name for
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: some reason, now, Arthur Morgan. Arthur Morgan, great game if
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: you haven't played it. He happens upon an inventor who
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: has these remote control boats that are like little battleship
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: kind of things that can like, you know, shoot missiles.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: And the whole idea is that he wants to get
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: investors and he rounds up rich people that are like
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: walking around in the city that you're in to come
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: and check out him using this wireless technolog And that
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: was sort of a time. It was just at the
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: same time, around the late eighteen hundreds or mid eighteen hundreds,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: and it was a time of that kind of ingenuity.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: When people were so far ahead of like what investors
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: were willing to put their money toward, you had to
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: really wow them with some kind of display that they
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: it was unequivocally a thing that was going to work
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: and that was worth their money.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they put some cash behind it. They
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: gave Morse and Co. Thirty thousand dollars to build a
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: thirty eight mile wire line from Baltimore, Maryland to Washington, DC.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And then on May one, oh, should we inflation calculate that?
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: We think, Oh, of course, whatever we can, we should.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: I'm going to guess one million dollars.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: So let's say, just for the sake of argument, let's
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: say eighteen forties dollars. And we said, what was that?
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Thirty thousand? Okay, so thirty thousand dollars in the eighteen
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: forties would be equal. Well, two, what did you guess?
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: One million dollars?
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Dude, you're really close. It's nine hundred and eighty thousand,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: four and eighty dollars.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Awesome. What do I win?
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: A peace of mind?
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: I'll take it, Okay, I need it.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I'm sure we have a T shirt somewhere.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: A ridiculous history T shirt.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna be one of those guys in the
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: band wearing their own shirt. That's embarrassing.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: I would wear a Casey on the K shirt.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, I absolutely would. That's different though, that that represents
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: the good mister Pegram, not our own.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Do we talk about this on air? I pitched Casey
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: on getting a T shirt with just his face on it.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: You were against that, right?
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah? I think so. I'm going to say a
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: note to that one. Oh man, Casey on the sad
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: sad case Well, you know what, Hey, how about this, listeners, Yeah,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: you guys speak up, let us know, demand it, Demand
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Casey's face on a T shirt. Then we'll see if
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: he changes his tune. Oh, we're gonna be in deep
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: trouble on that one. Huh so oh yeah. So they
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: strung up the line, Yeah, probably along a similar route
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: as there would have been a train travel I imagine.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: That would make sense, right, that's a good point. It
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: really gets national attention when the device is used by
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: the Whig Party to telegraph their presidential nomination from Baltimore, Maryland,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: to Washington, d C. Much much faster than an ordinary
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: courier could have traveled and people say, holy smokes, building
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: this wires is real pain. Once you have the wire up,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: this is very useful.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it makes me think of those barbed wire
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: telephone networks because all you need is a conductive material.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: There's something special about it just has to travel from
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: point A to point B and it can transmit those messages.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: And it's so cool because I mean, it makes sense,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: but I just wasn't thinking about it in these terms.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: You know, in my head, the invention of the telegraph
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: was so far removed from the inventor of the telephone.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: But that's how how technology works when you're building on
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: the work of others. Antonio Meucci, who was an Italian immigrant,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: started developing what was referred to as the talking telegraph
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: as early as eighteen forty nine.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: We see the concurrence or the confluence rather of these
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: similar technologies.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, speaking of your parallel thinking, the Italian gentleman I
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: just mentioned came up with his design completely independently of
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Alexander Graham Bell, who is credited with the invention. So
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: it just goes to show like it's totally a thing
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: that happens.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: It's first to the patent office. Sometimes that's the way
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: it works. Right. So Morris has finally achieved his mission,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: and almost twenty years later, nineteen twenty years later, he
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: has not put his tragedy to rest, but he has
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: made something positive in the world from this terrible personal catastrophe.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And that brings us to the question that we have
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: to ask, would Morse code or would the telegraph have
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: existed without this man on personal mission? The answer is yes,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: it just wouldn't be Morse code. We've been throwing around
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the phrase Morse code and we said they're dots and dashes.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: What exactly is Morse code? It changed a little over time, right.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: It did change a little bit over time, because, like
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: we said, you know, he had this invention that he
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: had worked with these other inventors to achieve, including Alfred Vail,
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: who invented his contribution to the device, which was the
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: telegraph key, which is literally that little button that we've
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: been talking about that allows you to like enter in
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: the code. But Morse himself was credited with coming up
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: with a system of dots, as in a short beep
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: and then a long beep beep versus beep, and with
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: those it's sort of like a Braille alphabet, but for
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: your ears instead of your fingers right.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Right, And he created this code with some inspiration from
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: earlier attempts to communicate even just line of sight over
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: distance through visual cues, you know, semaphore kind of stuff.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Yet a controversy exists. If you look at International Morse
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Code now we still call it Morse code, you'll see
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: that that fairly easy to grock system dots and dashes.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Or ditson does as it's referred to in the parlance
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: of Morse coderie.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I like the phrase coderie. However, many scholars
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: will tell you that Morse code is misnamed and it
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: should actually be called Veil code due to the contributions
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: of Alfred Vail, who collaborated with Samuel Morse. So many
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: scholars will say that Veil, as a collaborator, was the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: generative force behind what we call Morse code. However, people
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: who say that Morse invented it himself will point out
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: that Veil in public and private claimed he invented the code,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and he credited Samuel Morse with the creation of the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: code in different private correspondence. So if you want to
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: be a revolutionary academic, you can you can argue the
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: veil side of it. It's just many people attribute Morse
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: code to Samuel Morse, including Alfred Vail.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I actually had the misconception that Morse code
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: was sort of the way you would enter in letters
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: alpha numerically, like in a telephone where you know each
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: however many you know A is one dot, B is two,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: C is three. But if you think about it in
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: a whole sentence, if you keep things in one letter
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: at a time like that, it would take ages to
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: communicate any meaningful information. Right, So there's a whole other
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: system that makes Morse code efficient and able to have
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: high words per minutent counts, which is how Morse code
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: transmissions are measured. But I have to say, Ben, even
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: after reading into this stuff, maybe I'm being a little
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: dense here, I still don't fully get like how the
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: code works. Because if an S is an sos is
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: three dits, an O is three dos and S is
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: three dits, how does that relate to other letters? Or
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: is it a phrase based like maybe you can acca.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: So think of it in terms of units, So a
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: dit or dot think of it as one unit, almost
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: like music, Okay, and a dash is three units, so
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: dot and then a dash is got it for lack
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: of a better vocal cue, The space between parts of
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the same letter would be one unit, so there's one
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: dits space between these dits and these dos. And the
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: space between separate letters is three units, so there's a
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: three unit space between every letter that you send out.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: So when an sos, you would have that dit and
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: then a space for the span of three other dits.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: So people would say, Okay, that's stopped, that's an S
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: and then where is that why? On telegrams they say
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: stop now, I'm sorry, keep going. But the the the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: space between words would be seven units, so they're they're
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: counting not just the dits or the das, but they're
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: counting the absence of those, and they they can figure
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: out from the spaces between letters or words what a
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: phrase is supposed to be.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: I see. And also if I'm looking at this chart
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: of the alphabet and the number system one through ten
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: or one through nine and zero, it's a little easy
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: than you might think. A is dit do B is
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: dot dit dit dit C is da di da dit
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I like saying do dit it's fine, d is da
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: dit dit E is just one dit f is dit
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: dit do dit?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: And going back to your question, why is it not
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: a dit for one? Dit dit for two? Did dit
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: for three? I feel like a beats about to drop,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: but one is actually did da da da seems long
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: for one?
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: It does. And what we're talking about right now, this
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: code that we're reading back to you is what became
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: known as International Morris Code and it was adopted by
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: the international community because incorporated the Latin alphabet with some
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: extra Latin letters and also Arabic numerals and some punctuation
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: and some other symbols that were not accounted for in
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Morris's original code. So over time Morse's basis for Morse
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Code got phased out and it actually ended up not
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: even being the original Morse code that Morris created that
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: kind of took hold and got adopted by the international community.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: It was this International Morse Code that was developed by
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Frederick Clemens Girk, who was a German writer and journalist
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: and also someone that was very interested in telegraphy, and
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: he revised that Morse Code to make it make more sense,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: include more necessary care that could be adopted more widely.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So ten years after that first telegraph line opens
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: in eighteen forty four, there were over twenty three thousand
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: miles of line or wire crossing the continent and it
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: hit a watershed moment as various businesses that required quick,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: long distance communication began to use telegraph systems. Railroad companies
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: were one of the first to the plate there they
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: would use it to communicate between their stations, and these
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: telegraph companies began to pop up everywhere that you could imagine.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: While this was happening, countries in Europe were developing their
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: own system of Morse code. And the code used in
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: America was called American Morse Code or Railroad Morse, and
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: the code used in Europe was called Continental Morse. And
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: so that's when that's when they realized they need to
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: standardize this stuff, as you pointed out, with something that
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: everyone can agree on. And one of the things that
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: brought this need for an international code to public attention
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: was the use of radio communication, invented in the eighteen nineties, right,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: and radio frequencies got longer and longer and longer, it
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: became possible to communicate internationally. And that's when they realized, Okay,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: if we're talking about a global level of communication. We
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: all have to more or less be speaking the same language.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: That's right, and as technology tends to do, it was
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: subsumed by the next best thing, which became the telephone
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: or the talking telegraph, and then radio communication or wireless right,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: because you didn't have to have the infrastructure. It was
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: all just done on radio waves. Yeah. That was adopted
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: by the military for communicating between you know, planes and such.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: And even though like for example, amateur radio enthusiasts still
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: use Morse code, it's a little bit more of kind
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: of a quirky holdover from the past. I believe, Ben,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: you were telling me that pilots and the military personnel
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: had to learn Morse code up until I think the nineties, right, Yeah.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Up until the nineteen nineties, pilots were required to know
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: how to communicate using Morse code, and up until two
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: thousand and seven, if you wanted to get an amateur
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: radio license, you had to pass a Morse code proficiency test.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: But you're right, the average person today is probably not
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: going to communicate in Morse code, and they're probably not
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: going to know it. Most of us wouldn't know Morse code.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, I admitted at the beginning of the show
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: that I promptly forgot it after getting whatever merit badge
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I was gunning for. And believe it or not, man
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: American morse code, the railroad morse code is still around.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: It's nearly extinct, but it's still around. And one group
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: of people who are keeping it alive might surprise you, sure,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: amateur radio operators. I feel like that that's an easy one.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Civil war reenactors say, what civil war reenactors keep American
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: morse code alive?
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Interesting? And one that I hadn't thought about is or
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: something we haven't even discussed at all, is that you
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: can also transmit morse code visually through flashes of light
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: and at sea to communicate between ships or for a
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: ship to communicate with shore. They have these lamps that
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: have shutters on them. They can flash codes to, you know,
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: to the shore, so you can actually get messages back
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: to shore by line of sight.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And military personnel POW's have used Morse code through blinking
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: to communicate the true nature of their situation in.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Propaganda videos, so it's got all kinds of uses. Still.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Not to mention young lads banging on tree stumps in
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: the forest, Yes, yes.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's a huge industry nowadays, and that's our story.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: There is a point though, that we should make, and
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: that is that the telegraph system or something like it
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: would have developed without Samuel Morse because so many people
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: were working on something similar. However, his personal mission, his
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: passion to save other people from the situation that he
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: himself encountered, played a huge role in the timing of
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Morse code for it to become a thing when it did.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: It may have taken a little bit longer had one
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: man not been so emotionally and personally driven to pursue
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: this innovation. And you know what I say, thanks, because
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: we couldn't have had a podcast if things like Morse
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: code and telegraphs and later radio never existed.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, certainly like one of the earliest forms of
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: long distance communication that served as the basis for It's
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: just like the spark of an idea. So hey, what
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: if I could communicate an idea or a thought or
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: a message from point A to point B. That's literally
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: what podcasting and broadcasting a media of any kind is.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: It's all a jumping off from that simple idea.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: One day we should tell the story of Farnsworth, the
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: inventor of television. You know he got that idea when
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: he was a fourteen year old farmhand. Hmm, well, story
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: for another day. I like it, and we've got to say,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: maybe we should go back re record this entire episode
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: in worse code.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: What do you think? Yeah, I don't know about that.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: I'll think it over.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Let us know your thoughts on worse code. Feel free
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: to write to us in morse code if you wish.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook. You can find us
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: on I almost said Amazon. I don't know if you
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: can find us in Amazon, but we're definitely on Twitter,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: and you can find us collectively and individually on Instagram.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I am at Ben Bullen.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: I am at Embryonic Insider. You can check out our
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: community page on Facebook, The Ridiculous Historians, where you can
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: drop your history memes and hang out with your fellow
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: podcast fans enthusiasts and check us out next time when
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: we explore the weird story of how a stray dog
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: caused a war, It's true in the meantime thanks to
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: our super producer, Casey Pegram.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Casey, I want to make eye contact with you and
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: apologize for bringing up the Casey face t shirt again.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: But now the more I say the phrase, the more
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: I'm feeling it. So I don't know if this puts
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: us on opposite sides of history, but I hope we
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: remain friends.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: We'll see you ends up on the right side of history.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme and is
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: always on the right side of history and the right
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: side of our hearts, along with Gabe, our research associate,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: and you Ben.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: And to you as well, Noel, and you know what
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to you, Samuel Moose.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Here you go. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: favorite shows.