SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



wealth and honor upon him not, however, until he had 

 toiled and suffered long. 



ANTECEDENTS AND EARLY EXPERIMENTS OF MORSE 



Morse was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on 

 the 2yth of April, 1791. As a boy his tastes were for 

 things artistic rather than scientific, and after attending 

 Yale College for a time he became the pupil of Washing- 

 ton Allston, at that time one of the leading American 

 painters. In company with his teacher he went to 

 Europe to study art in the schools and become familiar 

 with the work of the old masters. In his work he 

 obtained considerable success as a student, and his 

 prospects for a successful career as a painter were 

 unusually bright. 



On his return to America, in 1815, his enthusiasm 

 for art was somewhat dampened by his failure to obtain 

 several important commissions for historical paintings, 

 and after working at portrait painting for several 

 years in Charleston, South Carolina, Washington, and 

 Albany, he finally took up his residence in New York, 

 where, in 1825, he laid the foundation and became the 

 first president of the National Academy of Design. Two 

 years later he became interested in the study of electric- 

 ity, dividing his time between the study of art and in- 

 vestigation of electricity. For a time, however, his 

 interest in science did not replace his devotion to the 

 brush; but in 1832, after returning from a trip to Europe 

 undertaken with a view to further study of the old 

 masters, his ardor for art, at least as a practical means 



[18] 



