Samuel Morse. Portrait of Samuel Finley Breeze Morse (1791-1872), American inventor of tele- graphy, in old age. Morse initially made his living as a painter. From 1832 he began work on electrical communication and designed a telegraph printer. Morse filed a patent for a practical system on 6th October 1837. On 6 January 1838 he gave the first demonstration of his Morse Code, a way of communicating using a series of dots and dashes. The first telegraph line, about 65km long, was completed in 1844 and linked Washington to Baltimore. The first message sent on it was insWhat hath God wroughtins. Morse was made very wealthy by his invention.