Most people know the name Samuel Morse because of Morse code. But before he became famous for dots and dashes, Samuel Morse spent years chasing a completely different dream. His path from struggling artist to one of history’s most important inventors is full of surprising twists, family pressure, and a little bit of luck. A Childhood Shaped by a Strict … Read More
The Most Famous Inventor You Know Nothing About | Samuel Morse Ep 332
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of Samuel Morris? Samuel Morris, Morris, Morse code. Yes, yes, it's the yes. Yes, I'm not even going to try to bury it. Sure. I tried to bury it with the other guy and you caught it and so I'm not even going to pretend the other guy. Yeah, no, but yeah, yeah, Morse code. He's known. Well, he he uh he invented Morse code. Yes, yes, but he did it as like a redemption from all the 00:26 Tom Z built he was like maybe he is bored. if I figure out a way to communicate over wire, people will forgive me for blowing them up. Yeah, yeah, 00:39 You cut up all your petticoats. You know? I was 13, I had my first love. There was nobody that compared to my baby and nobody can be twins or can ever come above age. political position is no, I've never, never cloaked. Things I learned last night. 01:08 now this is him. This is Samuel Morris. Oh wow, very well decorated. Yeah, this is him when he was young and hot yeah see and I think I've been researching a bunch of these old guys now and I think one thing I'm realizing start dressing like this again. Yeah, like that scarf thing. Yeah, I just feel it because look at it like let's say like now this person would have had a tighter haircut right yeah and he kind of looks like that guy that showed us the office down by a union station. Yeah, he does kind of 01:38 I can't you know and it's like he looks like a normal guy in the face Yeah, like like you could very easily see him wearing like a polo. Yeah looking like a golfer. Oh my gosh Mike Yeah, I think I do I like golf. I do I love golf I want I want to be a golfer so bad so should we get should we go? Did I tell you did I tell you last year when I tried to get into it a little before our arch? Oh Yes, I tell you yeah, and you got involved in that weird Hulk 02:06 he thought your I believed that I told you the story for a second and then I realized you got into that cult and they made you. They made you go scuba dive for the golf balls in the pond, but then they put a gator in the pond. It was like a funny little bit that they did. It's a thing they do here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was a and you swam faster than it. It was a slow. ran on top of the water like 02:35 like like road. What's that character in Captain Hook in the in Yeah, yeah, me, me. Does he the one who runs from the gator at the end or is Captain Hook from Captain a Captain? Yeah, what's the character's name? Sheme? I'm pretty sure it's just me. Okay, so you ran like the character you ran like that guy. Look, look, look, look, look, 03:04 What's his name? What's his name? No, I, I got into it. I went and I was hidden around the driving range for a few weeks. Yeah, I've got a set from high school that I bought at a garage sale, but it wasn't an incomplete set. And so then I went and I bought a putter when I was in high school and I've just had this sitting around my house for ever. Yeah. And then I never like got back into it. So then I went back, I was shooting around and then one day I was there. I like, I'm gonna go. I mean, they got the little putting green too. I'm very good. I'm gonna put it 03:33 I'm going to putt. And so I went and I grabbed my putter out of my bag and I'm like, this putter is like tiny. Why is this so small? And then I realized on the butter, it says lady tech. And I'm like, Oh, I bought a woman's putter in high school and I didn't even realize that all these years later. 03:52 and then I happy to be here by the way, slid that, hid that in my bag and I ran away. You were like, no, they're all gonna know. I'm using a woman's butter because I struggle with gender roles in our society and it makes me uncomfortable. We make them use men tools all the time. 04:14 it's the same. No more so we went to top golf this weekend. Yeah, my dad loves to do it. Yeah fun. I kind of liked it now that I'm like I love to better at it. Yeah, yeah, it's fun. We should go again. It's a great time. Let's do it. The food was fairly priced really yeah. I mean I haven't been in years but I mean like it was good going and being like this is not. I mean it was wasn't bad food. Yeah, it wasn't expensive. I mean I remember 04:40 if the prices haven't increased. I remember back then being like this is a little expensive, but it's like fun and so it's like worth it. But now that if it now stayed the same, it actually be cheap compared to everything else. No think about when you went though. Was it expensive for twenty two? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. I mean it was like you'd spend like twenty bucks for a couple hours to play right and then food was like depending on what you got like anywhere between like the sheet nachos, big as your laptop and it was fifteen bucks. 05:09 Yeah, that's normal. The 30 a person depending on what you order, how much you order. Uh huh. You got stuff to drink. Yeah. I don't know. What are you gonna drink? Just surely temples. Give me five rounds of surely tempo. I don't want all now because I'm thirsty. Yeah. Can you surely temple place? So Morse code? No. Before we talk about more to scale, we talk about his dad, Jenna, die of Morse. 05:38 Don't have a picture of Jedidiah Jedidiah is he graduated from Yale? uh Don't give me that face right now. This is gonna be so quick graduate from Yale uh big time 05:55 Tim loves to do this thing where we talk about topic and then he wants to spend half an hour on the guys. I didn't spin and think Tim daddy issues. I think Tim just is obsessed with dad's. was so impressive. It's probably because his dad was impressive and it usually is. It usually is his dad's fault. Yeah, no. All I want to say about him is his dad was a preacher and his dad had very 06:20 strong opinions about morality and what was okay, and this was in the late eighteen hundred so as morality yeah immoral and then also on the side where were they from where they lived at Massachusetts. They were on the right side of stuff right. I mean they were on the right side, but they were on the wrong side. know, but also like you know what was the progressive position in eighteen eighty. You know, I was just listening to a podcast this morning about how childly child labor became 06:50 illegal in the nineteen thirties, but there was a growing movement for it in the eighteen seventies, so it took us sixty seventy years to get that stuff. You know, so what was like the progressive? Is it I got a topic idea for you? Why you write this one down? If you want to remember it, can we just cover all the other proposals that were not the new deal because the new deal was the compromise? So there were like wildly more radical 07:18 proposals is interesting. That is interesting. I think what's interesting we don't do. We don't have go see him do his little thing. I think what's interesting. I think what's interesting so but also his dad, Joe Dyer on the side. He was this preacher, but on the side he was the father of American geography, and so this is one of his maps. Okay, 07:46 and I don't father of American geography sure whatever that means the mid eighteen hundreds. He's like mapping the great lakes are weird, but okay yeah, but I mean it's like close. You know I guess yeah, it's close until you see the West and then you just go. He was just just like it's something like this. was just yes. It is crazy. They got a little peninsula for for Mexico right. Yeah, I mean like it looks like the eastern side pretty 08:13 close. I mean this really does look like those kind of videos where it's like it's like draw America from memory and it's like this is the good one. This is the one where so draw from their for this is like this guy got it pretty close. Yeah, he got pretty close. Yeah, and but it's definitely not to scale Arkansas Oklahoma's huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean this is before like a lot of states to like the layout true. You don't really know where all the rivers go. Yeah, but this was in 08:42 textbooks for decades. Like this was like what we taught kids America looked like. It was close enough. And so Samuel grew up in this household, the geographer preacher and his dad Yale educated. So kind of the picture I'm trying to paint here, very like strict, like edgy, like uh academic and then also strict morally. uh And uh so Samuel comes up in this world. 09:10 And his dad really wants him to go to Harvard like so bad. He's like, I want you to go to Harvard. I want you to go to Harvard. Everyone wanted to go to Harvard that time too. He's like, I want you to get a good education. I want you to learn something valuable and then build a career for yourself. And Samuel's like, I want to do art. And his dad's like, no, no. And so his dad's like stifling his dreams of being an artist. And eventually after years and years of like combat on the subject, his dad finally agrees, fine, I'll let you go to France. 09:40 or no London. I'll let you go to London and I'll let you learn ah art and so he goes to art school in London. Right is the war of eighteen twelve kicking off, which I think I feel like we named that wrong. I don't think they were of eighteen twelve should be called. I think it should be called the second American Revolution and I'm going to like. I just feel like we didn't like, because you know anything about the war of eighteen twelve yeah. I feel like I know I know several things about it. What do know? 10:09 I know that it was in 1812. Probably the biggest thing I know about it. I feel like the war of 1812, it... I don't think it was very... I feel like that name's not very clear about what's happening, and I do feel like it was the war that made America, like, free. 10:33 like I feel like we won the revolution. I need you to know there are all of the eight hundred's. The only understanding I have of it is so our city 10:45 and so like if we picture the eighteen hundreds at all yeah I I just go yeah which is not fair because several our city is definitely eighteen eighties eighteen nineties yeah pretty late. It'd be like if I was like everything I know about the nineteen hundreds is the nineties is ninety five on you know and I didn't know about World War Two and stuff yeah you know yeah so he's there he's in London and so we're 11:13 fighting a war against them. He's there, but he's also like, so he's experiencing a weird, different perception of the war because he's in a different place, like he's in the enemy side of the war. But also something interesting is happening because he was very interested in art, but in the US at this time, art wasn't really a thing. There were artists, but there was nobody that was putting out prolific stuff. Where Europe, art was like... Everywhere. Years of history. They're doing art. And so he's in the Louvre and he's just like, this is amazing. 11:42 like these. This art is so good and he's like, I wish people back home could know what art could be because they couldn't like that. No one there knew what art could be, so he was like, I want to he's like most people don't have the access. They don't have the ability to get out here and see this. so I would like to like I feel like people knew what art was. I mean they knew what art was, but they didn't know like how good it could. It's kind of like how you know what a song is, but you don't know what they sound like right player. 12:11 She knows the songs exist. Yeah, she could tell you about her dumb little brain. Sorry, her term little brain can't hear. I heard you say the dumb part. Don't worry about it. She could tell you everything about it. She knows music theory really well. She like really understands music, but she's really been trying to try to hear it. And so she can tell you why she's like the kid at the end of polar express. She just said there. She's like, she's like, know exactly how this works here. The new why it's so special. Sure. 12:40 but I can't hear it. So keep going. So he he says, I'm going to do something about that problem. And so he basically locks himself in the Louvre. I don't know how he gets away with this, but he spends months in the Louvre just walking around with an easel painting what he calls the the the Museum of the Louvre. And so he paints a painting of the paintings at the. So that way people back home, you could take this back home and people back home could see all the most important paintings of all time. 13:08 what you like. There's a lot of people painting to the people that you should do this. I don't know if I don't know. I don't know if that's a thing like if people just hung out that museums and painted things like and it's like you can kind of see this like Mona Lisa's at the bottom. It's like the paintings are there. These are all famous paintings from history and it's like you can they're there, but they're so like you get it. You can't tell how special they zoom in. How big is this painting? Do you know? Yeah, so I actually have like a 13:38 Okay, it's pretty sizable. That's a big pain. So he was like doing his best. Yeah, so he's trying to make this painting. So this is like he's like so proud of this. He hangs it up. He goes back home. They put it in the museum back home and nobody cares. He like just sits in the museum and he's expecting people to be like, my gosh, look what they have over there. And people just like walk past it because they can't like because at the end of the day it's a picture of a bunch of pictures and 13:59 like to meta yeah yeah I understand and it's distracting too, because you don't know like what is what am I supposed to focus on here? Is it the people or is it the pictures? Is it the statue like what is what's the point of this and you also don't know like these are all famous paintings yeah you don't know they're famous paintings yeah yeah so it's like you're just like yeah this is like a room with a bunch of stuff on the wall. What is going on here and so it's not as like it is impressive yeah it's definitely an impressive work, ah but he like learns 14:27 art there and he becomes like a painter. He goes back home and he becomes a person who is like a highly sought after portrait artist. He makes really, really good portraits. Here's one of his portraits. People would hire him to make okay, and so they were really like photorealistic. Yes, we know who this guy is. I don't know some guy, so people would just hire him. He would paint them and he some guy and he built like a decent career for himself. Being the portrait guy, people hired him to do portraits. He's in the mall. 14:58 just got a mall portrait stop. It's been like hey, do you got time for a quick photo? I think that I mean wouldn't work now, but I think like twenty thirteen that would have crushed if someone tried that to do like what your paintings the same concept that you got from taking pictures in the nineties, the mall, it felt the same as a dude who did portraits of you like paint hand painted portraits. Yeah, he's got the most of their hipster. Yeah, yeah, mustache 15:23 tattooed. Yep, exactly. All those people who tattooed the mustaches on themselves, they still have them. So funny. In 2026, they still have them. Not all the time, because that spot, like that fades pretty. A lot of those people, bet, don't have them. It depends how good their artist was and how much ink they packed in there. I guess. I think a lot of those have probably faded pretty heavily. The skin there's not good at holding. Okay. I was just doing a little bit. 15:51 sorry I was wrong. I don't know a lot about tattoos because I follow Christ. I mean some of will probably do still have it anyways. Oh, don't give me points at the end there. So he he's traveling the world doing portraits now. Yeah, it would have crushed in twenty thirteen to be across from the food court, you know, because what was it the food court twenty thirteen? Sabaro uh 16:18 orange julius yeah orange julius a nameless chinese i was in vegas and i saw a standalone sabaro wild like like brick and building a full building sabaro that's crazy pretty cool that's yeah just a generic chinese restaurant yeah and then a subway probably and talk about sometimes maybe yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm trying to think what else you would have 16:45 pretzel place for sure. Oh, to Chinese restaurants. Actually, there were yeah Chinese and express no, it bad. Express one of them was a nameless. No, both of them were nameless in the battlefield. All yeah, battlefield. That's true. That's true and there was what was between them a little burger place, really cheesesteak. Yeah. Oh yeah, the Philly cheesesteak. Yeah, whatever. What is that? What is the company that is the Philly cheesesteak one? I can't start with a J right. Yeah, I can like picture the Jefferson's. No, no 17:13 what's the Philly cheesesteak in the food court? Oh no, right now I don't know. Food court Philly cheesesteak Charlie's Charlie's. Yep. Yep. Yep. Because the red logo Charlie's. That's good. I search food court with a P H. Hey, they've got that first P H O O D. You searched court 17:42 with a P. What are you talking about? You're thinking Philly food core with a P H. I was thinking Philly cheesesteak, but I did. 17:55 hey, they got one of those at the mall over here. Should we go? No, should we go get some at the Independence Mall? Yeah, dude, let's get some bullet proof. Fest go over a basically vague. That's crazy that they have anything. is crazy. Okay, so so he was traveling. I also have a guy who will paint your portrait. They I shouldn't say traveling worldwide. He was traveling the East Coast and 18:25 London. Doing portraits for people. And he was building like a moderately successful career for himself as a portrait painter. The thing is like he didn't want to do portraits, he wanted to do like influential works of art, but like he never was able to like achieve any of that. uh Meanwhile, he is on a ship on the way back home from uh London one year. And while he's on that ship, he meets a guy by the name of Joseph Henry. And Joseph Henry was a frontier school teacher turned like a uh professor. 18:55 And while he was teaching, he taught a lot of different things, but was a science teacher. And he was teaching about electromagnetism. Teaching about electromagnetism. And the concept of electromagnetism, if you don't know, if you have a metal cylinder and you wrap it in a wire and you send a current through that wire, it essentially creates a magnet and there's a magnetic field around it you can get whatever direction you face that you can get. 19:25 both sides of the magnet. And he was teaching about this concept to his class and he wanted to like show how powerful these could be, but it was kind of theoretical at the time because the only wires that existed were copper wires. And if you put them, packed them too close to each other, they would short circuit. And so the current would travel from one end of the wire to the other instead of, or travel like jump the wire up instead of traveling all the way through. Because we hadn't figured out how to insulate them. 19:55 And so he was like, theoretically, we can make these much stronger if we can figure out how to do that. And then one day he was like, oh, wait, I wonder if I could do that. So he went home and he talked to his wife and he said, Hey, I need you to cut up all your petticoats and she was like, is Morris. No, this is Joseph. This is uh Joseph. Henry. Okay. He's like, Hey, I need you to cut up all your petticoats. And she's like, what? And he's like, I'm to cut up all your coats. And so she's like, I guess you can have my own. It'll really crush. I need to cut up all your petticoats. And she's like, what? 20:23 he's like I need you to cut up all your coats and she's like okay and so then you want me to try one more time maybe it maybe try it. They run it back. Okay, so he goes to his wife. I got her pretty codes. 20:39 Hey, we just produced the price of our patreon to six ninety nine a month. That's one price for everybody. You get all the perks. You get the live hangouts, you get to join the discord, you get early access, whichever reason you're joining for. We wanted to make it one price because I hate that everything in the world is going up in price and so we wanted to make this a little bit more affordable for everyone to do and so but also you know the other goal is that more of you join it so that we can keep funding the show. I mean like what you know, how do I say that? That sounds like we're 21:07 poor and we are we are and uh no, but if you can't join us on patreon, no worries at all. Another way to support the show is by sharing it. Please tell somebody like the show and thanks for for being here for this episode. 21:24 he goes his wife, he goes to his wife, because she's like what and so yeah, he's like I need you to cover coats, cuts up all our coats and he she's like you know how you can get stuck in a loop. It's crazy because you're you're. It feels like the coil in your brain is not insulated well enough that it just jumps just instead of runs. Yeah, so he he goes to his wife. 21:52 It's the same. I got a red coat. She's like, what? I need to cut up your coats. So she lets him do it. Okay. She cuts up all his wife's coats and he makes insulation like the first insulated copper wire. And he discovers that when you do that, you can pack this in so much tighter on this coil. 22:19 And he makes an electromagnet that is packed in so tight it's capable of lifting 1,500 pounds. so he's he's capable of lifting through a magnet so he could have a piece of metal that's 1,500 pounds and that magnet could lift it. It was so powerful. And so big was it? I mean, it was a big electromagnet. Yeah. And so, and because it's like the way an electromagnet works is if the current's running through it, the magnetism is on. 22:46 If you cut off the current, the magnetism turns off. So you can like pick stuff up and move it and drop it. And so he's like, this is so great for class. So he starts showing his class that it's super fun. And then he realizes he is working in a university um that's like not like a major well-known university. It's kind of like Iowa State. Kinda. I don't know exactly where he's at, but I do know most of the population are farmers. so these farm kids are not like engaging with his subject matter very well. 23:15 means he's like I they're like make it pick up cows and he's like well that's first of all that's ranchers first of all that's not what you do. You are a farmer. Yeah, you guys need seeds. It is pretty crazy at that time like ninety percent of ninety five percent of the country. Yeah, farm like the dust bowl. I think yeah, just crazy and so he says I know what I'll do. I know all these kids keep getting distracted. They're on their phones. I want to be able to teach and I can't and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to get an anvil. I won't put this anvil in class 23:46 I'm magnetize it and then totally hang it up above. And when I feel like people aren't paying attention, I'll just cut the current. 23:55 So he just is dropping an anvil on your class. Yeah, he's just dropping an anvil. And so obviously like this is a major big piece of metal. It's like and then like he turns it back on and sucks it back up. It's like now that I got your attention and then he just keeps going on with his lecture. Like that's how he taught and he is like he is a through and through academic. So he's just trying to like 24:20 discover what he can do with this. And so he's constantly doing experiments with this electromagnetic field and uh different magnetism and running these wires and things like that. So he builds like a repeater so he can actually have like a battery that's outside of this. All Joseph Henry, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, what if there's a battery outside the classroom and I can connect it? So he ends up he has a battery that's a mile away because he's just like, how far can I get this to stretch? And he has like repeaters in the middle of it. That's uh pushing the current further along and things like that. So like he is just like 24:50 really uh studying, but kind of just playing with electricity to see like what he can do with it. And then teaching his class. also love doing that. Nothing. 25:06 I don't feel this. I can't feel this. I go, Ray, come over here. And I go like this. And then I touch right and jeet. And I'm just like, I can't feel anything right now. Except alive. was like 16. I was serving at my church. Sorry, sorry. on. on. me try over. 25:34 I was 16 years old I was serving at my church. I got involved with the Russian mob. So when you were 16 years serving in church. the thing that they needed was they needed some electrical work done. And so was like, I'll help change some outlets. And I'm from the other side of the church, like about to change this outlet. It's like a little electrical outlet, but I'm like getting ready to go. And I yelled to my pastor who's across the church. like, Hey, did you turn off the breaker? And he's like, yeah. And he didn't. And so I just got in there and I got a pretty good little zap. 26:03 And he thought that was so funny. Like he knew he didn't turn it off. It wasn't like he made a mistake. It was like a prank that he was chip. No, I was like, you think that's funny? He's like, yeah, I was really, he's like, you should have seen your face. All that trick you do. Yeah, you've been in a coma for eight months. Kind of funny. Pretty good. 26:28 Yeah, I played this really good prank on the 16 year old kid to pranks really and uh both the same level of prank when he was 16. I electrocuted him. He was in a coma for nine months and then when he was and when he was like in college, I gave him my wife's putter 26:52 which is like so funny. It's almost as funny. So just Henry tells them all about this on a boat on the way back from England. It's a long boat ride. Yeah. So they're just hanging out and Samuel's here and all this and Sam was like, that's really interesting. Like this is crazy. And he's like, so you're telling me like you can kind of send a signal. And he's like, yeah, you could send a signal really far. And Samuel's brain starts to kind of kick around. And he's like, I wonder if like, cause my problem. 27:22 was that like there's really cool stuff in London that no one back in the States is getting to see. And so what if we can use that to help them like see stuff from London? And so he starts to kind of theorize a possible world where you can run one of those wires for miles and miles and miles and be able to communicate and like share information with each other across the mass distances. And so uh he goes back home. 27:50 And he meets up with an NYU professor named Leonard Gale. uh And he's like, he's like, Hey, I heard about this thing. I want to build it. Here's my idea. And Leonard is like, yeah, theoretically that could work. Like you should try it. And so he kind of talks, coaches him through like how to build it. So he goes home and he builds his own little device that could transport things. And it was like the first rendition of like a Morse code device. Um, essentially a Morse code device. Essentially the way this worked was you would have a single copper wire. 28:19 on one end of a system and you would use this to kind of tap a bell and that would create this electrical signal and that signal would travel and on the other end it there would be a bell that it was tap back exactly the taps that you you sent. The problem was he was having a really hard time. The signal would get really weak really quickly and he couldn't get it to go the full distance, so he shows back up at NYU and he's like look what I got and the professor's like oh, that's pretty cool and then he's like look at like die so fast which professor we're talking about Gale. Yeah, Gale 28:48 So Gale helps him build a repeater. Gale's like, here's what you would do like to get it to where it could, could travel further distances. Right. Meanwhile, he also finds, this guy by the name of Alfred Vale, which very similar name. Gale, Vail. Yes. Gale, Vail and Morse. And Vail was like a financier in New York and Vail was like, this could, this has some potential. And so Vail invests in his idea and Vail. 29:18 and him start to talk about like how they could use it, how this could be useful. Cause right now it's just like, you can just send like some sounds, but it's, and so in Morris's brain, Morris is like, well, what if like you would hit the button and it's like, okay, I hit it 12 times. And then we have a book and for every number, there's a book where we associate associate every word in the English language to a number. So you go through and you'd like, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, for every word in the English language. it takes like 29:47 hours to decode this thing. And Vail was like, that's a stupid idea. oh That's such a bad idea. And Vail's like, just do a code. Like just do it to where each like dot and dash equals a letter. And so Vail is like, okay, I'm going to help you come up with a better code here. What Vail does is that really interesting. He goes to local printing presses. He just hangs out in the press and he pays attention to a couple of things. He pays attention to the letters that are getting used the most. He pays attention to the letters that are like the most like damaged. 30:15 in the press. Yeah. And he says, OK, we're going to R-S-T-L-N-E are the most common. Oh, I thought you were spelling something. I was like, that doesn't sound like a word. 30:37 So he, yeah, I was spelling food court, R S D L L E that's supposed food court, right? So they come up with what ends up becoming Morse code and the way they did it is the easiest letters um were the ones that were the most used letters. Right. And so they're just dots and dashes. The way it is, is a dot is a quick signal. A dash is a long held signal and they all uh establish a different letter in the alphabet. um And so 31:06 They were doing these tests where they were interpreting these different messages back and forth between each other. And this was working pretty well. And so they essentially had this proof of concept and they knew, okay, if we want this to actually uh be successful, we need to build a uh sample for this. And so he says, I want to actually go to the U.S. government and I want to ask them for $30,000, which adjusted for inflation is about a million dollars today. And he says, I want to build a line, a telegraph line from 31:36 I think it was New York to Baltimore, so I can test this and see that this actually works long distance sure, and so he goes to Congress and Congress ah basically is like okay. We're going to work it into our next big bill yeah and Congress is like let me send an email and see if we're allowed to this. 31:58 uh chat bot says it's good to go. says great idea. This has never been thought of revolutionary thinker. It was Washington and honestly that's the difference. So in eighteen forty three Senate convenes to go over their next like finding their budget for the next year in which year we're talking eighteen forty three got it and uh the line was actually Washington to Baltimore. So misspoke there, but Washington to Baltimore way closer. uh Yeah, 32:27 Yeah, say yeah, like I'm wrong. Yeah, right. It's way closer, but it's also still not that much further. All right. See, I mean, it's probably, it's what I hate. Here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say twice the distance is what I'd say. Baltimore is going to be double the distance of Washington to Baltimore. I know Washington and Baltimore are very close together. Washington, DC, Baltimore, let's see. 46 miles. Okay. 32:55 I yeah, I think I feel like that's possible. Maybe it's about a hundred. What is it? They're close. Oh my gosh. Apple made maps on. made everything unusable. Holy cow, dude. That's crazy. It just freezes up. That's so 46 miles, one hour. So Baltimore to Washington DC, 46 miles. Yeah. All right. And you're guessing double 33:23 I think it's probably close to double, maybe 100, it might be 100. I'll say double, so that's 92 miles. Yeah. 33:31 What is it? A hundred and eighty eight so like a lot more. So like, okay, whatever. Fine. So it would have been way more expensive. Anyways, Washington Baltimore is the proposal. They said we'll put in our next funding bill, but that year the funding bill was highly contested and so they convened to go over the bill. He shows up in Washington. He's sitting in like the gallery of the Senate floor, like listening to the debates and they're like heavily combating over this. 34:01 He's got a senator that he's like in cahoots with. So senator's like, we're going to argue, we're going to get you in. And then he comes to him late in the evening that night, and it has to close at midnight. And he comes to him, he's like, Sammy, I don't know, man. I don't think this is going to happen. Like, we're spending so much time on all this stuff, I don't think we're even going to get to your thing. And he's like, I think you should just go home. I don't think it's going to happen. Yeah, you should make the long drive back. So Sam leaves, dejected, goes back to the hotel. 34:29 very upset about what's happening. And the daughter of that friend, name's Annie Ellsworth, the next day, he meets up or he runs into her at like a local diner or something. And she's very excited to see him and he's dejected. And she is the one who actually tells him the news. Hey, at midnight last night, right as the bell told, they got it through. You got your $30,000 funding. And he is speechless because he did not expect it to happen. When it happened. 34:58 they argued, they argued, they argued and then last thirty minutes they just skyrocketed through all the last budget issues. Okay, okay, vote, vote, vote, whenever it's kind like whenever you waste a lot of time on an episode and then right before the end you sneak in like yeah, CIA CIA CIA ghosts aliens, ha ha ha ha all right, fiddle off, you know, like that's like you do that at the end. So you're like so is dad who's got hairy arms and big biceps and is very impressive. 35:29 And then also here's the thing he did. All right, cool. So the main thing is dad is hot. 35:45 So he's so excited about this. Yeah. That he says, he tells Annie, says, Hey, he says, look, I'm so pumped that you told me this. So pumped in fact, that I'm going to let you send the first message when we built this thing. Okay. It's to work. They started building it. And what's interesting is their original plan was to run this underground and lead pipes. Um, but they, 36:08 were having problems with conductivity because it's lead pipes. And so like they couldn't get that insulation to work right. And they ended up pivoting half with the project to do overhead wires. Yeah. So it's really interesting to think about, like, if they could have figured that out, what the world would have been like because we crossed the country and power lines and telegraph wires because they couldn't solve that problem. And now they can. Yeah. Now there's no need for us to have that stuff. Plastic. Right. But for real, mean, like, now... 36:35 but it's really interesting to think like that. What possible in our lifetime? We'll get rid of all these telephone poles and stuff because I think it's the infrastructure safer underground. Yeah, it's definitely a good question. I mean not not just safer as far as like safety. It costs more, but I'm saying like when storms come through yeah, you don't have to worry about those going. You know, I don't know. Actually, I don't know. I wonder we should ask our we should ask our connect on that. Yeah, we should plug into our connect on that. 37:05 so he'll say no, no, they're not. They're gonna do that. I never go to change. I gotta do that. Why? He'll go. Why would they do that? That's exactly how respond. Well, I mean like a long term because I gotta do that. 37:22 so you guys are stupid. Yeah, I remember young and I remember being so stupid. I was such a dumb person. He still listens to this. I he listened for a little while. Maybe he gave up. He might have. don't know. I don't know. He hasn't mentioned anything to us. I know it makes me think he's not listening to it anyways, so they build the line and they end up. Let me see if I can get the first message. Eighteen forty four. Okay, they run the first test 37:51 And the idea of the test was we're going to run it one way and then we're going to run the exact same message back. Okay. So they sit down to do the test. He turns to Annie. She's there and he says, what do you want to say? And she says, I want to say what half God rot and he's like, oh, okay. And then it sends instantaneously from Washington to Baltimore. was the first message that Zuck posted on Facebook? Do we know what the first Facebook post said? I don't 38:21 No, but I've got a feeling it's not good. You don't think you don't think it's what hath God released on humanity. It was probably hello world. That's like a common thing and like software developers. Hello hot girls. I'm trying to meet through this new website. I made. I was going to say I bet that I'm trying to rate women on this. Yeah, that's what I bet the first one to ten nine 38:47 Oh, the first thing was a picture of Al Pacino. Oh, with the guy with the does a picture of Al Pacino covered in binary code. All right. Sure. Yeah, it weird. uh So that message was actually a reference to numbers chapter twenty three, which is the story of Balaam's donkey. Do you know the story? It's the weirdest story in the Bible. If you don't know Balaam's donkey is a story where this guy Balaam is riding his donkey. 39:16 And he, the donkey's not doing what he wants because the donkey sees an angel and the donkey's like, there's an angel right there. There's an angel, but Bail him can't see it he's not a holy man. And so he keeps hitting or a donkey turns out. So he keeps hitting that donkey and uh, uh, the, the dot three times. And then finally the angel or what we then find out is the Lord speaks through the donkey. The donkey turns around. 39:45 to mail and time goes hey, what has that rot? No, he says, what have I done to make you beat me three times and he argues with his donkey and they go back and forth and then finally his donkey's like he's like he's like I have been your noble Steve for years. 40:06 this is have I have I been in the habit turns around and this is a lot of people didn't catch the reference because he turns around and he goes in the morning. I'm making waffles. The donkey sounds like a smoker because like I don't know if you've tried to do that, but it like it takes a toll on the vocal cords, you know, and so like that they argue in the docks. He's like finally like have I not been good to you? Like have I ever done this before? Is this a habit of mine to not do what you ask? And Balaam's like no. And then when he says no, the angel like appears to him and he kind of has this like Paul moment. 40:35 where he like turns to the Lord. The next chapter, uh Baelic, which is like, uh he's a king of some nation, doesn't matter. He's a king of a nation. He sends Baelic to go curse God's people. And he goes to curse God's people. He realizes, because now he's one of God's people, he's like, he's like, can't curse them. So he blesses them. And Baelic is like, what are you doing? And he's like, he's like, I can't, following what God told me to do. And then he looks at the beautiful place that God created for his people. 41:04 and he says, what has God rot is what Balaam says. Sure, it's like this is an amazing thing that that God has done. So that was the ideas. This is an amazing thing we appreciate you being here for Tillen Church. This week we do have a giving box that will be passed around 41:27 Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of things. I learned last night. If you liked the show, you want to support us, we've got merchandise that you can get and it's good stylish stuff that I made. put a lot of work into this stuff, so it's great to find other tilling fans in the wild and be like, wait a minute. I know that shirt. And so yeah, we would love for you to do that. You can pop over to shop.tillin.com or the QR code or there's a link in the description. There's plenty of ways to find it. We promise we made it super easy. So thanks for supporting the show and thanks for listening. 41:57 did you see a Russell brand yeah yeah. I was like what was the was a Bible fascism hasn't me. I do appreciate though that he didn't just make it up. I do appreciate that. know what I let him for me. Fine that was that was where he was like I can't find it, but this is you know I and I do feel like I you know it be like if you put a sophomore in high school 42:24 from youth group on TV and we're like you're down the face of Christianity. uh Yeah, yeah, you know, but a sophomore in high school with problematic allegations. Yeah, I'm sorry. I school is got like a history real that is clearly running from and it is crazy like knowledge, but but anyway we are going to pass the plate just wherever you're at right now alone in your car on your morning walk. Just look around there's 42:54 There's a plate coming for you. 42:58 like you imagine you're just like at a stoplight so a word and they're holding a plate full of cash. You got to put something in it. I just on the other side of the car pass it through the blade. There's a church in Springfield to use KFC buckets. I always thought that was so funny. It's hilarious. So this message that phrase what hath God rot yeah like that was like all over the news. They sent it to who was in Baltimore to receive it. It was just one of like his business part. 43:26 Okay, so that person sent it right back immediately and this was like this proved it was possible and so this became a thing where like people uh The the media for decades would use this phrase What hath God rot when talking about new technological? Discoveries being like and it was like what has God rot exclamation point like God has brought forward a new amazing technology for us That's gonna help us push humanity forward and we're gonna become better because of it. What's interesting rarely are we doing that? 43:54 You know, I feel like new technologies come along and rarely are we like, we're going to be better now. Well, what's really interesting is this phrase for this was 1844. This phrase for nearly a hundred years was what has God rot? Look how amazing this is. And now it's and then the atom bombs dropped and the headline in the Adams bombs was what has God rock question mark? And it changed that phrase. And through the end of the nineties, that phrase was a common phrase that the media would use when technology or something went too far. 44:23 and like was like the dark side. was like, yeah, God do really interesting, like change of that phrase there. And so next time you think about talking, donkeys think about that. So he then after this, this is the proof of the concept. And this is also another really interesting thing here. This is the first time we really have in recorded history where the government funds a private business venture. And it's obviously fruitful and worth it for them. Like they, the Morse code became a huge deal. 44:53 uh or I guess the telegraph became a huge deal, but kind of set a precedent for a lot of future investment that the government would do. What's interesting is this does well for him. He starts crossing the country in telegraph lines. Their copycats start popping up. He gets put into like pretty brutal. um 45:19 legal battles, yeah patents, because he patented the whole process and everything, and so he gets in pretty pretty brutal battles. One of them uh O'Reilly versus Morse is still cited to this day in legal battles. This was an eighteen fifty three because there was a lot of different things that that he had tried to patent along the process. The eighth item that he tried to patent on this process was basically electricity. Oh sure, sure, sure, sure. Basically was like yeah. 45:48 I have the patent to using electricity to communicate. And they were like, no. Yeah. And so this was the decision that was made was that you can't patent a physical reality if you discovered it. You can patent the machinery used to can't patent gravity. Yeah. And you can't even patent the concept of electric communication. You can patent your process, your machinery that does that, but you can't patent the thing. Got it. And so this was actually like, this is cited in current technology things where like, 46:17 if uber were to try to patent ride share technology, they couldn't patent that they could patent the way they do it, but they couldn't be like, we're the only ones who can do this because we're the god we have pat night right. And so it's really interesting to think about like that moment had the courts decided a little differently what the world would look like today because businesses would totally do that. Like at and t would be the only internet service provider. Like facebook would be the only right in your area. You do have a lot of internet provider choices. Don't you because 46:46 you know, otherwise, thank God, well, they would have God rod that you have multiple internet providers to choose from right, right. Yeah. Who do you have at your house? We have and could you choose another one? We could do fiber. We could do fiber. We could do T mobile. You can do Google fiber. Yeah, yeah, we could do Google in my neighborhood. I can only do spectrum. That's crazy. That is the only one I'm to 47:14 It's the only one available to my my area crazy. I mean it is it is bad out there. I'm not saying it's now, but we're not gonna crash out. We're not gonna crash out. We're not gonna crash out. Sorry. Was that a little too hard? Don't do it software. I'll do it. Sorry. We're not gonna crash out. I like you flinched. I like that you're still scared a little bit. Yeah. The person you shot me all those times when we were in college. That was easy. Anyways, so with a gun 47:54 With a gun. So here's the thing. Here's what's interesting about this. This changed the world in so many ways. Obviously you can communicate overseas for the first time. Warfare changed. How did they those cables back then? How'd they do that? I guess I don't know. Maybe radio waves. Maybe they figured out how to do it with radio waves. Maybe. I don't actually don't know how they did it overseas. They probably ran them underwater. Probably figured out a housing for it. Random. I really don't know. Anyways. 48:24 The couple of really interesting things, one, I don't know this, but before Morse code, trains were pretty dangerous because they ran on like predetermined schedules, but if there was a delay. Oh yeah, then you didn't know what was coming your way. Yeah, and so there was head on collisions all the time with trains. And so this solved that problem because they could actually communicate to you like, okay, we're behind five minutes. And then they could shift the schedules on trains. So it made train travel much safer, which made it cheaper, which made it available to more people. Same thing with ships. 48:52 it made traveling overseas safer, cheaper because you could just communicate. They had to figure out how to do radio waves because like ships had it on there. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was, it had to be radio. You're right. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, I bet there was like receivers that would then put it through a line. What's the movie where he's blinking doing the Morse code? I don't know. It's probably a reference because there is a when, when did it come out? 49:21 I guess, oh, it is a reference to the real life guy right in Vietnam. There was a yeah, there's a guy who was maybe it was Vietnam. There was a war. It was a war. He's a P. W. Yeah, P. O. W. And they made him do like a propaganda video thing, but he was blinking Morse code of like torture because like the video was like they're treating us great. We're having a great time. We're having fun. We love these people right, but he was saying that about blinking torture. There's a movie. I think it's called untraceable. Is that a movie? Look it up. It was a pretty crazy 49:51 crazy on a pole with a P H on traceable. It was a movie got a thirty two percent got a sixteen percent on rotten tomatoes two thousand eight. It's a horror action movie yeah and Tom Hanks son is I was going to say I was like wait is this Tom Hanks son yeah. I never knew that this was Tom Hanks son yeah he's in he's in Fargo yeah really good. I didn't know that this was his son. I never but yeah 50:19 you know it's a website that the more people go to the website, the faster the person dies. It's a live stream saying so like you know and they couldn't figure out and then one of the guys who's in battery acid dying is codes, the worst goes the address interesting interesting. Yeah, I mean I've never seen that I've never even heard of it was a bad movie. I that 50:44 I was an eighth grade. What's it you think about all this? And I was like, there's not as many layers to this as maybe there should be. uh He ran for mayor in 1836 after he like for Baltimore or New York. They're just so close. New York. He actually ran for mayor of New York and he ran as the nativist candidate. And this goes back to his childhood. He learned this from his dad. He was a nativist, which was a kind of small. They don't wear clothes. 51:14 I'm a naked. It's my political position is no. I've never, never clothed. What that in the intro, huh? Him stumbling over my political position is thumb. No, I'm not cool. No clothes. Did I send you that video of top the log uh singing one of his songs and it's just like the arc over time of like I've seen the lyric and how now he just can't sing it. I don't think it's that he can't sing it. 51:44 I cause it is pretty fast. So there's a chance he can't really sing it. But as you go, like it slowly turns from, oh, he's singing the lyrics to like, Oh, every couple of words, he just makes a sound to like this last one. He's just, I'm not kidding. I'll show you in the after the film. He just goes, oh that's exactly the other night. So they were playing baby by Justin Bieber. Yeah. I didn't realize that I, I still know the whole rap part, you know, 52:13 hold on when I was thirteen. I have my first love. It was a ready to compare to my baby and nobody can be twenty so can ever come above age. He had me going crazy. Oh, it's pretty good. You got nah, the whole thing. No, I don't get copyrighted. I'm so good at it. So I'll be like track. He's the ease. I'm really good at it. That's crazy that you remember. I had a couple Shirley temples. That's and you get me hopped up on sprite in brennan. 52:42 and I will be a thing. I rap. We're not get too much sugar. I get going so 1936. He runs for mayor and he runs for May 1936. How old is he this 1836? I was gonna say 1836. This is before the Eric. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, and so he runs for mayor and on his campaign. He runs from a campaign he got from his dad and this was a lot of his political and moral beliefs and the nativist position he had was that there should be no immigrants 53:12 And more importantly, there should be no Catholics. He said the Catholics are the problem in this country. we didn't, if we stopped the Catholics from coming, then everything would be so much better. 53:23 I'm joking. So he was very, very strongly anti-Catholic and he was like, he's like, they're all coming from overseas and they're ruining this country. We need to make sure that we don't let them in. The irony, nothing is new. Yeah. And the irony of all this is he lost, you know, I think he got like 1400 votes. So he basically got nothing. And the irony of all this is his invention ended up making it really easy to immigrate to this country. And so like there was a big boom after 53:52 the telegraph was invented and so it's kind of funny that like he had this kind of I guess also there's a there's this is a thing where it's like this is now a universal code yeah. The whole world knows Morse code yeah, so even if you don't speak the same language, it can well you start a spell on a chance that ever I never mind, never mind, but it did. It was groundbreaking would been better if you had for certain for every word you know. 54:22 sorry I do fifteen thousand three hundred and eighty two to say fiddle off. We're not ready yet. Oh dang it. So most that part that part most countries in the world were like this is so significant. Yeah, like this is one of the biggest discoveries we've ever had and so he just starts getting showered with gifts from every other country. So like countries are sending them like gold, silver, they're sending them like amulets and statues. Some are sending them just outright money 54:51 He gets $30,000 in cash from England. And so like he's getting like all these gifts. Yeah. So he starts a business, his business does well. But the bigger, the majority of his wealth comes from all these, all these countries just giving them stuff. And so that's where this picture comes from. Like he wasn't, he was never a war person. He just got all these awards from all these different countries for like his scientific discovery. The irony of it is he didn't discover anything like literally none of like even 55:18 when he started building this like he had like it's just the John Henry's guy. Yeah, John Henry discovered this veil and what was it hail gale veil and gale perfected it and then he got the government to fund it but even hand the government he got his friend to help the government to make it happen. No, he got his friend in the government to get it past Senate. Yeah, but he has he had his other friend figure out which letters they'll have in the letters. They'll the letters. Yeah, so like he really did 55:44 very little of this. did kind of like oversee it. But I mean, I guess that's no different than any business leader now. They don't do anything. And so he ends up in 1872. He dies of pneumonia and he has an estate valued at $500,000 in 1872, which translates to about $13.4 million today. So yeah, really well. Or does well really well for himself. And that technology, like it globalized our economy. Right. It made us more efficient. It was a major 56:13 part of industrialization. And honestly, it was the birthplace of modern computing because even the dots and dashes eventually would become what we would see in transistors with bits and ones and zeros. so this concept, in one sense, he's the father of the modern information age. in one sense, honestly, he is because, like I just said, most of these modern organizations, 56:42 there is the figurehead. There's the Steve Jobs whom who brought brings the right out, but then there's the people who actually built it and he was a person who actually built it. The irony of this whole thing. It's like our podcast. The art. I'm like the figurehead and I make you do all the grunt work. I don't want to do it becomes and it's been a pretty decent partnership, but I'm also just realizing that maybe because you do all that stuff. That's why we're only have ten listeners. So he the company does everything. ah He's successful. 57:12 He's making a lot of money the thing happens um but he goes home and he's Succeeded and so he goes home and he's like he's like feels empty. Uh-huh gets back in a painting He starts painting again and he spends the last like 20 years painting paintings does a W bush thing at the end and he spends his last 20 years of his life painting and The funny thing about this is I think I don't know if he lost it or what but what we hear from written reports 57:42 is that after he died, the executors of the will come to his house and they find all these paint, like hundreds of paintings that he painted over the years. And they said they were so bad that they didn't even think that they could sell them. So they just threw them all away. And so all of these just got lost to time that potentially could have been really like famous works of art, maybe. Cause he was supposed to be. Because all the people there were like, Oh, this stuff sucks. 58:08 So is the only painting that he has on display somewhere that one of the yeah of all the other paintings yeah and what that's a good painting is what I'm saying. That's like that's the lighting is there. That's good. Well, what's interesting is this what we see here. This is a copy because he actually at the time there was this new technology and paint that he used for that that made all of the paintings he was copying outlive this painting like it deteriorated faster, and so this is actually a copy that's on display. 58:37 Wow, is this gone? Is his long gone ah and all those, all those ancient paintings that he was copying survived. So that's Samuel Morris, a painter and Morse code inventor. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad that he switched to letters instead of cause then you'd have to 59:01 I'm typing fiddle. 59:13 Off. 59:21 What did I say? You said if you like this episode, you might like Rudolph diesel and episode we did about the guy who made you're not going to believe it diesel the truck like not their musician anyway, didn't make them and and then you can join us on patreon and we'd love for you to do that. So thanks for supporting the show. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing, so we'll see you next week.