The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

by James Gleick

Educated at Yale College, the son of a Massachusetts preacher, Morse was an artist, not a scientist. In the 1820s and 1830s he spent much of his time traveling in England, France, Switzerland, and Italy to study painting. It was on one of these trips that he first heard about electric telegraphy or, in the terms of his memoirs, had his sudden insight: “like a flash of the subtle fluid which afterwards became his servant,” as his son put it. Morse told a friend who was rooming with him in Paris: “The mails in our country are too slow; this French telegraph is better, and would do even better in our clear atmosphere than here, where half the time fogs obscure the skies. But this will not be fast enough—the lightning would serve us better.” As he described his epiphany, it was an insight not about lightning but about signs: “It would not be difficult to construct a system of signs by which intelligence could be instantaneously transmitted.” TELEGRAPHIC WRITING BY MORSE’S FIRST INSTRUMENT ALFRED VAIL’S TELEGRAPH “KEY” Morse had a great insight from which all the rest flowed. Knowing nothing about pith balls, bubbles, or litmus paper, he saw that a sign could be made from something simpler, more fundamental, and less tangible—the most minimal event, the closing and opening of a circuit. Never mind needles. The electric current flowed and was interrupted, and the interruptions could be organized to create meaning. The idea was simple, but Morse’s first devices were convoluted, i...