Hoxton. In the following year he offered his services to the London Missionary Society, and after he had attended David Bogue’s college at Gosport and studied Chinese under a native teacher, he was appointed to Canton in 1807. After a year of much hardship he became translator to the East India Company’s factory there in 1809, and worked at a Chinese Grammar and a translation of the New Testament, both published in 1814. In 1817 he published A View of China for Philological Purposes, and his translation of the Old Testament (in which William Milne collaborated) was completed in the following year. His next enterprise was the establishment (1820) of an Anglo-Chinese college at Malacca for “the reciprocal cultivation of Chinese and European literature.” Here too were trained native Chinese evangelists who could proceed to the mainland and carry on Christian work with comparative immunity. In 1821 Morrisons’s Chinese Dictionary, in six 4to volumes, a monumental work, was published by the East India Company, at a cost of £12,000. Leaving China at the close of 1823, Morrison spent two years in England, where he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Returning to China in 1826, he set himself to promote education and to prepare a Chinese commentary on the Bible and other Christian literature. He died at Canton on the 1st of August 1834. Morrison was admirably fitted for the pioneering work accomplished by his grammar and dictionary; and his establishment of a dispensary, manned by a native who had learned the main principles of European treatment, marks him out as the forerunner of modern medical missions.
His Memoirs, compiled by his widow, were published in 1839. See also R. Lovett, History of the London Missionary Society, vol. ii. ch. xix.; C. S. Horne, The Story of the L. M. S. ch. v.; Townsend, Robert Morrison (1888).
MORRISTOWN, a town and the county-seat of Morris county,
New Jersey, U.S.A., on the Whippany river, 31 m. (by rail) W.
of New York City. Pop. (1890) 8156; (1900) 11,267; (1910
census) 12,507. It is served by the Delaware, Lackawanna &
Western, the New Jersey & Pennsylvania and the Morristown
& Erie railways. Morristown is situated on a table-land surrounded
by picturesque hills. It is primarily a residential suburb
of New York, and has many handsome residences and a number
of large estates. Near its centre is a public park, in which is a
soldiers’ monument (59 ft. in height). At Morris Plains, about
4 m. to the north, is a state hospital for the insane (1876).
Morristown, officially named in 1740 in honour of Lewis
Morris (1671–1746), then governor of New Jersey, and grandfather
of Gouverneur Morris, was settled about 1710, under
the name of West Hanover, by Puritans, who were attracted
here by the presence of iron ore. From January to May
1777, and again from December 1779 to June 1780, Morristown
was occupied by the American army under Washington.
Behind the court-house is the site of Fort Nonsense, built at
Washington’s orders, largely to keep his soldiers employed. In
December 1779–January 1780 General Benedict Arnold was
tried before a court martial presided over by General Robert Howe
(1732–1785) in the Dickerson tavern here, still standing. In
Morristown, at the old Speedwell ironworks (almost completely
destroyed by fire in 1909), was made a part of the machinery of
the “Savannah,” the first steamboat that crossed the Atlantic,
and here Samuel F. B. Morse and Alfred Vail completed the
invention of the electric telegraph. Morristown was incorporated
as a town in 1865.
See A. M. Sherman, Historic Morristown, New Jersey; The Story of its First Century (Morristown, 1905) and Julia K. Colles, Authors and Writers Associated with Morristown (Morristown, 1893).
MORSE, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE (1791–1872), American
artist and inventor, was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts,
on the 27th of April 1791, son of Jedidiah Morse (1761–1826),
Congregational minister there and a writer on geography, and
a grandson of Samuel Finley, president of the college of New
Jersey. At the age of fourteen he entered Yale College, where
he graduated in 1810 and where under the instruction of Jeremiah
Day and Benjamin Silliman he received the first impulse towards
electrical studies. In 1811 Morse, whose tastes during his early
years led him more strongly towards art than towards science,
became the pupil of Washington Allston, and accompanied his
master to England, where he remained four years. His success
at this period as a painter was considerable. In 1825 he was
one of the founders of the National Academy of Design, and
was its first president, from 1826 until 1845. The year 1827
marks the revival of Morse’s interest in electricity. It was at that
time that he learned from J. F. Dana of Columbia College the
elementary facts of electromagnetism. As yet, however, he was
devoted to his art, and in 1829 he again went to Europe to study
the old masters.
The year of his return, 1832, may be said to close the period of his artistic and to open that of his scientific life. On board the packet-ship “Sully,” while discussing one day with his fellow-passengers the properties of the electromagnet, he was led to remark: “If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted by electricity.” In a few days he had completed rough drafts of the necessary apparatus, which he displayed to his fellow-passengers.[1] During the twelve years that followed Morse was engaged in a painful struggle to perfect his invention and secure for it a proper presentation to the public. In poverty he pursued his new enterprise, making his own models, moulds and castings, denying himself the common necessaries of life. It was not until 1836 that he completed any apparatus that would work, and finally, on the 2nd of September 1837, the instrument was exhibited to a few friends in the building of the university of the City of New York, where a circuit of 1700 ft. of copper wire had been set up, with such satisfactory results as to awaken the practical interest of the Messrs Vail, iron and brass workers in New Jersey, who thenceforth became associated with Morse in his undertaking. Morse’s petition for a patent was soon followed by a petition to Congress for an appropriation to defray the expense of subjecting the telegraph to actual experiment over a length sufficient to establish its feasibility and demonstrate its value. The committee on commerce, to whom the petition was referred, reported favourably. Congress, however, adjourned without making the appropriation, and meanwhile Morse sailed for Europe to take out patents there. The trip was not a success. In England his application was refused, and, while he obtained a patent in France, it was subsequently appropriated by the French government without compensation to himself. His negotiations also with Russia proved futile, and after a year’s absence he returned to New York. In 1843 Congress passed the long-delayed appropriation, steps were at once taken to construct a telegraph from Baltimore to Washington, and on the 24th of May 1844 it was used for the first time. In 1847 Morse was compelled to defend his invention in the courts, and successfully vindicated his claim to be called the original inventor of the electromagnetic recording telegraph. In 1858 the representatives of Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, the Holy See, Sweden, Tuscany and Turkey appropriated the sum of 400,000 francs in recognition of the use of his instruments in those countries. He died on the 2nd of April 1872, at New York, where his statue in bronze now stands in the Central Park. (See Telegraph.) He introduced into America Daguerre’s process of photography, patented a marble-cutting machine in 1823, and in 1842 made experiments with telegraphy by a submarine cable.
See S. Irenaeus Prime, Life of S. F. B. Morse (New York, 1875).
MORSE, the ornamented brooch by which a cope is fastened. The usual form is a large circular clasp made of gold or silver and studded with jewels. A 14-century “morse” ornamented with translucent enamel is in the British Museum. The word
comes through the O. Fr. mors, from the Lat. morsus, the catch of a buckle, from mordere, to bite.
MORSHANSK, a town of Russia, in the government of Tambov, 50 m. N. of the city of Tambov, on the Tsna river. Pop. (1900), 25,913. The village of Morsha was founded in the middle of
- ↑ Five years later the captain of the ship identified under oath Morse’s completed instrument with that which Morse had explained on board the “Sully” in 1832.
