Why did the painter invent the telegraph?

1832 One day in June, the "Sally" sailed out of the English Channel, entered the vast Atlantic Ocean, and slowly sailed for the United States. There is a young doctor named Jackson on board. He is happy to tell the passengers an interesting little experiment: As long as a wire is wound around an ordinary iron bar, and then the wire is electrified, the iron bar will suddenly become a magnet, which can suck nails and iron filings. He also said that no matter how long the wire is, current can pass in an instant. This experiment is not surprising today, of course, and it is described in middle school physics textbooks. However, in the 1930s of 19, the principle of electromagnet was little known. Jackson's speech opened the eyes of the audience around him, and they applauded warmly.

The speaker has no intention, but the listener has intention. Jackson himself doesn't know. His performance on the ship changed the life of one of the passengers. This passenger is a famous American painter-Morse.

Morse was deeply moved by Jackson's wonderful evolution. He couldn't sleep all night, and his mind was haunted by the question: Since electric energy can travel thousands of miles in an instant, why can't it be used to transmit information? At that time, he was already in his early forties, but overnight, he resolutely made an amazing decision: throw away the brush in his hand, give up the career he had struggled for nearly half his life, and turn to the study of using electricity to transmit information. He also intends to call the method of transmitting information by electricity "telegraph". When he told Jackson the decision the next day, Jackson was very surprised: "You don't even know the basic knowledge of electricity, so you want to invent the telegraph. Isn't this great? "

No difficulty can change Morse's determination. He sold all his possessions, bought all kinds of electrical materials and tools, and eagerly studied electrical knowledge. Three years later, this experiment almost used up all Morse's savings, but the telegraph was still not built. The key problem is how to make electricity represent different information. Someone once used multiple wires to connect two places to communicate, so that some of them were charged and the rest were uncharged to represent a letter, and different combinations of charged wires represented different letters. But this method has too many connections and is not practical. Some people use different deflection angles of the magnetic needle to represent different letters, but the equipment is complex and prone to errors.