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Samuel Morris was on a ship coming back from Europe in 1832.

He had been a portrait and a historical painter.

Painting never made him that rich. He traveled to Europe for three years to study the old masters.

On his voyage back to the U.S., on this ship, Morse happens to meet Charles Thomas Jackson,

an American who had been studying in Europe, and he knew about recent experiments in electromagnetism.

Jackson described how electricity could be sent along a wire,

and if that wire was long, the electricity could still be detected at a distance. Now, as the

Atlantic tosses the ship homeward, Morse has very little to do.

So he's thinking more and more about magnets and more and more about electricity and mixing them together.

Could the electronic pulse plus the magnet get this key to strike?

That was known.

Send a signal that could make a key strike. Like a piano key. strike. That was known. Send a signal that could make a key strike. Hmm. Like a piano key.

Wait, if I could do that, here I am on the ocean. What if it's a really long wire?

Let me just think through this. I could get that pulse. I mean, it would need some voltage and some amperage, but I could send a signal far away. And what if that signal could be something more? He's got the whole

system worked down. The electric pulses would lead to key strikes, and there'd be a way of turning

...