A Twist in the Tale

Abstract

Any schoolchild will tell you Samuel Morse invented the telegraph. And James Watt the steam engine. And that Priestly discovered Oxygen. But these ‘facts’ belong to a long list of misconceptions that many people – including scientists – have accepted over the years. For Morse never invented the telegraph; he merely got all the necessary information from the American physicist, Joseph Henry, and later denied that Henry had helped him. A good promoter, Morse persuaded the US Congress to build the first telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore in 1844, and thus wriggled his way into the history books!