Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals: In Two Volumes, Volume I.

Samuel Morse inventor of the telegraph was first a painter, and these intimate letters and journals reveal the man caught between two passions. This volume traces his early years: born into a prominent Massachusetts family, educated at Yale, sent to England to study portrait painting, and then drawn inexorably toward the mysteries of electricity. The correspondence captures a restless mind at work, watching the currents of scientific possibility that would eventually let humans transmit messages across continents. We see his struggles with finances, the rejection of his early artistic efforts, and the gradual convergence of his interests toward a revolutionary idea. These are not polished memoirs but the raw materials of a life being lived. For anyone curious about how American ingenuity actually happened, from the inside, this volume offers unparalleled access to the thoughts of a man who shortened the world.