Samuel Finley Breese Morse was a well-known portrait painter who turned to science in mid-career and pioneered the electric telegraph.

Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April 27, 1791, Morse was the oldest son of Jedidiah Morse, an eminent geographer and Congregational clergyman. He attended Yale, where he developed an interest in painting miniatures and attending lectures on electricity. After graduation, Morse sailed to England, where he studied painting from 1811 to 1815. On his return to Boston, Massachusetts, Morse opened a studio and soon found that portraiture was the only type of art that would sell. Within a few years, he developed a distinguished reputation as a portrait painter.

Burdened with financial concerns and mourning the successive deaths of his young wife, his father, and his mother, Morse returned to Europe in 1829 to continue his artistic studies. His return voyage to the United States in 1832 aboard the Sully became the turning point...