Lightning Man!
 

Okay, all you morose code lovers, a new book just for beepers:

"Lightning Man; The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse" by
Kenneth Silverman, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 504 pp, $35.

A biography of "Polymath's Progress" as the L. A. Times Book
Review section titled a full-page spread by Henry Petrouski
(professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University)
in the Sunday, 26 October 2003 edition.

Glowing reviews on the book, not necessarily on the character
of Finley (as he was called when a young man)...a rather routine
portrait painter of the early 1800s looking for some grande
scheme of fame and fortune, only one of which made it...with
the help of a lot of other talent...and others' money.

LHA

In article ,
(Brian) writes:

Lightning Man? Sounds more like Ben Franklin's experiments. Maybe
Jim can fill us in - I think they were second cousins.

The quaint press prodigies of the 1840s called the Morse-Vail
Telegraph System "The Lightning Wire." On the basis of that
they dubbed old Finley as "The Lightning Man."

I don't think Parson Jimmie goes into professional or commercial
communications history, only amateur stuff. The 1844 Baltimore
to DC line was for commercial communications using morse.

LHA