While on a visit to Paris during the autumn of 1875, and engaged in
perfecting his receiving instrument for submarine cables, he caught a
cold, which produced inflammation of the lungs, an illness from which he
died in Paris, on October 19, 1875. A memorial service was held in the
Anglican Chapel, Paris, and attended by a deputation of the Academy.
His remains were taken to his home in Park Crescent, London, and buried
in Kensal Green.



CHAPTER III.

SAMUEL MORSE.

Cooke and Wheatstone were the first to introduce a public telegraph
worked by electro-magnetism; but it had the disadvantage of not marking
down the message. There was still room for an instrument which would
leave a permanent record that might he read at leisure, and this was the
invention of Samuel Finley Breeze Morse. He was born at the foot of
Breed's Hill, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1791.
The place was a little over a mile from where Benjamin Franklin was
born, and the date was a little over a year after he died. His family
was of British origin. Anthony Morse, of Marlborough, in Wiltshire, had
emigrated to America in 1635, and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, He
and his descendants prospered. The grandfather of Morse was a member of
the Colonial and State Legislatures, and his father, Jedediah Morse,
D.D., was a well-known divine of his day, and the author of Morse's
AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY, as well as a compiler of a UNIVERSAL GAZETTEER His
mother was Elizabeth Ann Breeze, apparently of Welsh extraction, and the
grand-daughter of Samuel Finley, a distinguished President of the