Robert Moog

Best known as the inventor of the Moog synthesizer, The pioneer of electronic music, Robert Moog (Pronounced “Mogue”) was born on 23rd May 1934. Bob Moog’s innovative electronic design is employed in numerous synthesizers including the Minimoog Model D, Minimoog Voyager, Little Phatty, Moog Taurus Bass Pedals, Moog Minitaur, and the Moogerfooger line of effects pedals.He was born in New York and attended the Bronx High School of Science in New York, graduating in 1952. Moog earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Queens College, New York in 1957, another in electrical engineering from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in engineering physics from Cornell University. Moog’s awards include honorary doctorates from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (New York City) and Lycoming College (Williamsport, Pennsylvania).Moog created the first voltage-controlled subtractive synthesizer to utilize a keyboard as a controller and demonstrated it at the AES convention in 1964. In 1966, Moog filed a patent application for his unique low-pass filter which issued in October 1969. He held several dozen patents.

Moog also employed his theremin company (R. A. Moog Co., which would later become Moog Music) to manufacture and market his synthesizers. Unlike the few other 1960s synthesizer manufacturers, Moog shipped a piano-style keyboard as the standard user interface to his synthesizers. Moog also established standards for analog synthesizer control interfacing, with a logarithmic one volt-per-octave pitch control and a separate pulse triggering signal. The first instrument – The Moog modular synthesizer became one of the first widely used electronic musical instruments. Early developmental work on the components of the synthesizer occurred at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, now the Computer Music Center. While there, Moog developed the voltage controlled oscillators, ADSR envelope generators, and other synthesizer modules with composer Herbert Deutsch. In 1971 Moog Music began production of the Minimoog Model D which was among the first widely available, portable and relatively affordable synthesizers. One of Moog’s earliest musical customers was Wendy Carlos whom he credits with providing feedback that was valuable to the further development of Moog synthesizers.Moog also constructed his own theremin as early as 1948. Later he described a theremin in the hobbyist magazine Electronics World and offered a kit of parts for the construction of the Electronic World’s Theremin, which became very successful.

In the late 1980s Moog repaired the original theremin of Clara Rockmore, an accomplishment which he considered a high point of his professional career. He also produced, in collaboration with first wife Shirleigh Moog, Mrs. Rockmore’s album, The Art of the Theremin. Moog was a principal interview subject in the award-winning documentary film, Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, the success of which led to a revival of interest in the theremin. Moog Music went back to its roots and once again began manufacturing theremins. Thousands have been sold to date and are used by both professional and amateur musicians around the globe. In 1996 he published another do-it-yourself theremin guide. Today, Moog Music is the leading manufacturer of performance-quality theremins. Through his involvement in electronic music, Moog developed close professional relationships with artists such as Don Buchla, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, John Cage, Gershon Kingsley, Clara Rockmore, Jean Jacques Perrey , and Pamelia Kurstin.

In a 2000 interview, Moog said “I’m an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers. They use my tools.”During his lifetime, Moog founded two companies for manufacturing electronic musical instruments -RA Moog Co who manufactured Theramin Kits but left after a disagreement and formed a company called Big Briar. He also worked as a consultant and vice president for new product research at Kurzweil Music Systems from 1984 to 1988, helping to develop the Kurzweil K2000. He spent the early 1990s as a research professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. During his lifetime Moog received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1970, and In 2002, Moog was honored with a Special Merit/Technical Grammy Award, and an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music. Moog was also the inspiration behind the 2004 film Moog.

Sadly he was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor on April 28, 2005 and passed away nearly four months later, at the age of 71 in Asheville, North Carolina on August 21, 2005. The Bob Moog Foundation was created as a memorial, with the aim of continuing his life’s work of developing electronic music. He is survived by three daughters (Laura Moog Lanier, Michelle Moog-Koussa, Renee Moog) one son (Matthew Moog) one stepdaughter, Miranda Richmond, and five grandchildren.

World Information society Day

World Information Society Day (World Telecommunication Day) takes place on 17 May to commemorate the founding of the International Telecommunication Union in 17 May 1865 by the Plenipotentiary Conference in Malaga-Torremolinos.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU; French: Union Internationale des Télécommunications (UIT)), originally the International Telegraph Union (French: Union Télégraphique Internationale), is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that is responsible for issues that concern information and communication technologies. The ITU coordinates the shared global use of the radio spectrum, promotes international cooperation in assigning satellite orbits, works to improve telecommunication infrastructure in the developing world, and assists in the development and coordination of worldwide technical standards. The ITU is active in areas including broadband Internet, latest-generation wireless technologies, aeronautical and maritime navigation, radio astronomy, satellite-based meteorology, convergence in fixed-mobile phone, Internet access, data, voice, TV broadcasting, and next-generation networks. The agency also organizes worldwide and regional exhibitions and forums, such as ITU Telecom World, bringing together representatives of government and the telecommunications and ICT industry to exchange ideas, knowledge and technology.

The ITU, is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and is a member of the United Nations Development Group, and has 12 regional and area offices in the world. ITU has been an intergovernmental public–private partnership organization since its inception. Its membership includes 193 Member States and around 800 public and private sector companies, and academic institutions as well as international and regional telecommunication entities, known as Sector Members and Associates, which undertake most of the work of each Sector.

.It was introduced by a United Nations General Assembly resolution, after the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis called upon the United Nations General Assembly to declare May 17th as World Information Society Day. The Main Objective of World Information Society Day is to focus on the importance of Computerised Information Technology, to raise global awareness of changes brought about by the Internet and new computerised Technologies, to raise awareness concerning other issues relating to the Information Society and to help reduce the digital divide. In March 2006 The General Assembly adopted a resolution (A/RES/60/252) stipulating that World Information Society Day shall be celebrated every year on 17 May. The first World Information Society Day took place on Wednesday, 17 May 2006.

Lupus Day

Lupus Day takes place annually on 10 May. The purpose of Lupus Day is educate people concerning the symptoms, effects and Treatments for this Autoimmune disease which effects the body’s immune system and mistakenly attacks healthy tissue in many parts of the body. Symptoms vary between people and may be mild to severe.Common symptoms include painful and swollen joints, fever, chest pain, hair loss, mouth ulcers, swollen lymph nodes, feeling tired, and a red rash which is most commonly on the face. Often there are periods of illness, called flares, and periods of remission during which there are few symptoms.

The cause of SLE is not clear. It is thought to involve genetics together with environmental factors. Among identical twins, if one is affected there is a 24% chance the other one will be as well.Female sex hormones, sunlight, smoking, vitamin D deficiency, and certain infections, are also believed to increase the risk. The mechanism involves an immune response by autoantibodies against a person’s own tissues. These are most commonly anti-nuclear antibodies and they result in inflammation.Diagnosis can be difficult and is based on a combination of symptoms and laboratory tests. There are a number of other kinds of lupus erythematosus including discoid lupus erythematosus, neonatal lupus, and subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus.

There is no cure for SLE. Treatments may include NSAIDs, corticosteroids, immunosuppressants, hydroxychloroquine, and methotrexate. Alternative medicine has not been shown to affect the disease. Life expectancy is lower among people with SLE. SLE significantly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease with this being the most common cause of death. With modern treatment about 80% of those affected survive more than 15 years. Women with lupus have pregnancies that are higher risk but are mostly successful.

The Rate of SLE varies between countries from 20 to 70 per 100,000. Women of childbearing age are affected about nine times more often than men. While it most commonly begins between the ages of 15 and 45, a wide range of ages can be affected. Those of African, Caribbean, and Chinese descent are at higher risk than white people. Rates of disease in the developing world are unclear.Lupus is Latin for “wolf”: the disease was so-named in the 13th century as the rash was thought to appear like a wolf’s bite.

SLE is one of several diseases known as “the great imitator” because it often mimics or is mistaken for other illnesses. SLE is a classical item in differential diagnosis,because SLE symptoms vary widely and come and go unpredictably. Diagnosis can be difficult. Common initial and chronic complaints include fever, malaise, joint pains, muscle pains, and fatigue. However these symptoms are so often seen in association with other diseases, and may indicate other things. While SLE can occur in both males and females, it is found far more often in women, and the symptoms associated with each sex are different. Females tend to have a greater number of relapses, a low white blood cell count, more arthritis, Raynaud’s phenomenon, and psychiatric symptoms. Males tend to have more seizures, kidney disease, serositis (inflammation of tissues lining the lungs and heart), skin problems, and peripheral neuropathy.

As many as 70% of people with lupus have some skin symptoms. The three main categories of lesions are chronic cutaneous (discoid) lupus, subacute cutaneous lupus, and acute cutaneous lupus. People with discoid lupus may exhibit thick, red scaly patches on the skin. Similarly, subacute cutaneous lupus manifests as red, scaly patches of skin but with distinct edges. Acute cutaneous lupus manifests as a rash. Some have the classic malar rash (or butterfly rash) associated with the disease.This rash occurs in 30 to 60% of people with SLE. Hair loss, mouth and nasal ulcers, and lesions on the skin are other possible manifestations.

Lucy Wills

leading English hematologist and physician researcher Lucy Wills, LRCP was born May 10 1888 in Sutton Coldfield. Generations of the Wills family had been living in or near Birmingham, England, Her paternal great-grandfather, William Wills, had been a prosperous Birmingham attorney from a Nonconformist Unitarian family (see Church of the Messiah, Birmingham). One of his sons, Alfred Wills, followed him into the law and became notable both as a judge and a mountaineer. Another son, Lucy’s grandfather, bought an edge-tool business in Nechells, AW Wills & Son, which manufactured such implements as scythes and sickles. Lucy’s father continued to manage the business and the family was comfortably well off.

Wills’ father, William Leonard Wills (1858–1911), was a science graduate of Owens College (later part of the Victoria University of Manchester, now part of the University of Manchester). Her mother, Gertrude Annie Wills née Johnston (1855–1939), was the only daughter (with six brothers) of a well-known Birmingham doctor, Dr. James Johnston. The family had a strong interest in scientific matters. Lucy’s great-grandfather, William Wills, had been involved with the British Association for the Advancement of Science and wrote papers on meteorology and other scientific observations. Her father was particularly interested in botany, zoology, geology, and natural sciences generally, as well as in the developing science of photography. Her brother, Leonard Johnston Wills, carried this interest in geology and natural sciences into his own career with great success. Wills was brought up in the country near Birmingham, initially in Sutton Coldfield, and then from 1892 in Barnt Green to the south of the city. She went at first to a local school called Tanglewood, kept by a Miss Ashe, formerly a governess to the Chamberlain family of Birmingham.

At the time she was born English girls had few opportunities for education and entry into the professions until towards the end of the nineteenth century. Wills was able to attend Cheltenham Ladies’ College, Newnham College Cambridge, and the London School of Medicine for Women In September 1903 Lucy Wills went to the Cheltenham Ladies’ College, which had been founded in 1854 by Dorothea Beale. Wills’s elder sister Edith was in the same house, Glenlee. She passed the ‘Oxford Local Senior, Division I’ exam in 1905; the ‘University of London, Matriculation, Division II’ in 1906; and ‘Part I, Class III and Paley, exempt from Part II and additional subjects by matriculation (London), Newnham entrance’ in 1907.

In 1907, Wills began her studies at Newnham College, Cambridge, a women’s college. Wills was strongly influenced by the botanist Albert Charles Seward and by the paleobiologist Herbert Henry Thomas who worked on carboniferous paleobotany. Wills finished her course in 1911 and obtained a Class 2 in Part 1 of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1910 and Class 2 in Part 2 (Botany) in 1911, however she was ineligible as a woman to receive a Cambridge degree.

Sadly in February 1911, Wills’s father tragically died at the age of 53 then In 1913, her elder sister Edith also died at the age of 26. In 1913 Wills and her mother traveled to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. A friend from Newnham, Margaret (Margot) Hume, was lecturing in botany at the South African College, then part of the University of the Cape of Good Hope. She and Wills were both interested in Sigmund Freud’s theories. Upon the outbreak of World war One in August 1914, Gordon enlisted in the Transvaal Scottish Regiment. Wills spent some weeks doing voluntary nursing in a hospital in Cape Town, before she and Margot Hume returned to England, arriving in Plymouth in December. In1915, Wills enrolled at the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women. Which had a number of students from India, including Jerusha Jhirad, who became the first Indian woman to qualify with a degree in obstetrics and gynecology in 1919.

Wills was awarded the oLicentiate of the Royal College of Physicians London in May 1920 (LRCP Lond 1920), and was also awarded the University of London degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery awarded in December 1920 (MB BS Lond), at age 32 becoming a legally qualified medical practitioner and decided to research and teach in the Department of Pregnant Pathology at the Royal Free. There she worked with Christine Pillman (who later married Ulysses Williams OBE),

Wills left for India in 1928 and began research work on macrocytic anemia in pregnancy. This was prevalent in a severe form among poorer women with dietary deficiencies, particularly those in the textile industry. Dr Margaret Balfour of the Indian Medical Service had asked her to join the Maternal Mortality Inquiry sponsored by the Indian Research Fund Association at the Haffkine Institute in Bombay, now Mumbai. In 1929, she moved her work to the Pasteur Institute of India in Coonoor (where Sir Robert McCarrison was Director of Nutrition Research). In early 1931 she was working at the Caste and Gosha Hospital in Madras, now the Government Kasturba Gandhi Hospital for Women and Children of Chennai. During the summers of 1930-32 she returned to England and continued her work in the pathology laboratories at the Royal Free.By 1933 she was back at the Royal Free full-time.

Between 1937 and 1938 she visited the Haffkine Institute Travelling by an Imperial Airways Short ‘C’ Class Empire flying boat Called the Calypso. Herjourney began at Southampton landing on water for refuelling at Marseilles, Bracciano near Rome, Brindisi, Athens, Alexandria, Tiberias, Habbaniyah to the west of Baghdad, Basra, Bahrain, Dubai, Gwadar and Karachi, with overnight stops at Rome, Alexandria, Basra and Sharjah (just outside Dubai). The five-day flight was the first Imperial Airways flight to go beyond Alexandria. In Bombay Wills was on dining terms with the governors and their wives at Government House – Sir Leslie Wilson in 1928 and Sir Frederick Sykes in 1929. In 1929 she visited Mysuru and met Sir Charles Todhunter, the Governor of Madras and secretary to the Maharaja of Mysuru. Here Wills observed a correlation between the dietary habits of different classes of Bombay women and the likelihood of their becoming anemic during pregnancy. Poor Muslim women were the ones with both the most deficient diets and the greatest susceptibility to anemia (pernicious anemia of pregnancy). However, it differed from true pernicious anemia, as the patients did not have achlorhydria, an inability to produce gastric acid and did not respond to the ‘pure’ liver extracts (vitamin B12) which had been shown to treat true pernicious anemia. It was named Mycrocytic Anaemia and was characterized by enlarged red blood cells which is life-threatening. She postulated another nutritional factor was responsible for this macrocytic anemia other than vitamin B12 deficiency. This was later discovered to be folate, of which the synthetic form is folic acid.

Wills investigated possible nutritional treatments for Anaemia by studying the effects of dietary manipulation on a macrocytic anemia in albino rats at the Nutritional Research Laboratories at the Pasteur Institute of India in Coonoor. Which involved Rats being fed the same diet as Bombay Muslim women. The rat anemia was prevented by the addition of yeast to synthetic diets which had no vitamin B. This work was later duplicated using rhesus monkeys. Back in Bombay, Wills conducted clinical trials on patients with macrocytic anemia and discovered that it could be both prevented and cured by yeast extracts, of which the cheapest source was Marmite. Wills returned to the Royal Free Hospital in London from 1938 until her retirement in 1947. During the Second World War she was a full-time pathologist in the Emergency Medical Service. Work in the pathology department was disrupted for a few days in July 1944 (and a number of people were killed) when the hospital suffered a direct hit from a V1 flying bomb. By the end of the war, she was in charge of pathology at the Royal Free Hospital and had established the first hematology department there. After her retirement, Wills traveled extensively, including to Jamaica, Fiji and South Africa, continuing her observations on nutrition and anemia. Until she sadly passed away in April 16 1964)

Radio Day

Radio Day is celebrated in the Russian Federation and some Eastern European countries on 7 May. Radio Day commemorates the pioneering work of Russian physicist Alexander Stepanovich Popov who presented a paper on a self built wireless lightning detector on 7 May 1895.

Russian physicist Alexander Stepanovich Popov (sometimes spelled Popoff; Russian: Алекса́ндр Степа́нович Попо́в; was Born in Krasnoturinsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast in the Urals on March 16 [O.S. March 4] 1859. He was the son of a priest and became interested in natural sciences when he was a child. His father wanted Alexander to join the priesthood and sent him to the Seminary School at Yekaterinburg. However he developed an interest in science and mathematics and instead of going on to Theology School in 1877 he enrolled at St. Petersburg university where he studied physics. After graduation with honors in 1882, he stayed on as a laboratory assistant at the university. However the salary at the university was inadequate to support his family, and in 1883 he took a post as teacher and head of laboratory at the Russian Navy’s Torpedo School in Kronstadt on Kotlin Island.

Popov’s work as a teacher at a Russian naval school led him to explore high frequency electrical phenomena. Along with his teaching duties at the naval school Popov pursued related areas of research. Trying to solve a problem with the failure in the electrical wire insulation on steel ships (which turned out to be a problem with electrical resonance) led him to further explore oscillations of high frequency electrical current His interest in this area of study (including the new field of “Hertzian” or radio waves) was intensified by his trip in 1893 to the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in the United States where he was able to confer with other researchers in the field.

Popov also read an 1894 article about British physicist Oliver Lodge’s experiments related to the discovery of radio waves by German physicist Heinrich Hertz 6 years earlier. On 1 June 1894, after the death of Hertz, British physicist Oliver Lodge gave a memorial lecture on Hertz experiments. He set up a demonstration on the quasi optical nature of Hertzian waves (radio waves) and demonstrated their transmission at distances up to 50 meters. Lodge used a detector called a coherer, a glass tube containing metal filings between two electrodes. When received waves from an antenna were applied to the electrodes, the coherer became conductive allowing the current from a battery to pass through it, with the impulse being picked up by a mirror galvanometer. After receiving a signal, the metal filings in the coherer had to be reset by a manually operated vibrator or by the vibrations of a bell placed on the table nearby that rang every time a transmission was received. Popov designed a more sensitive radio wave receiver that could be used as a lightning detector, to warn of thunderstorms by detecting the electromagnetic pulses of lightning strikes using a coherer receiver.

On May 7, 1895, he presented a paper “On the Relation of Metallic Powders to Electric Oscillations”, which described his lightning detector, to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society in St. Petersburg which demonstrated the principal of the wireless lightning detector he had built that worked via using a coherer to detect radio noise from lightning strikes. This day is celebrated in the Russian Federation as Radio Day. In a March 24, 1896, demonstration, he used radio waves to transmit a message between different campus buildings in St. Petersburg. His work was based on that of another physicist – Oliver Lodge, and contemporaneous with the work of Guglielmo Marconi. Marconi had just registered a patent with the description of the device two months after first transmission of radio signals made by Popov.

In 1900 a radio station was established under Popov’s instructions on Hogland island (Suursaari) to provide two-way communication by wireless telegraphy between the Russian naval base and the crew of the battleship General-Admiral Apraksin which had run aground on Hogland island in the Gulf of Finland in November 1899. Although The crew of the Apraksin were not in immediate danger, the water in the Gulf began to freeze. However help did not arrive until January 1900 although By February 5 messages were being received reliably and the Apraksin was freed from the rocks by the icebreaker Yermak. Then Over 50 Finnish fishermen, who were stranded on a piece of drift ice in the Gulf of Finland, were also saved by the icebreaker Yermak following distress telegrams sent by wireless telegraphy. In 1901 Alexander Popov was appointed as professor at the Electrotechnical Institute, which now bears his name. In 1905 he was elected director of the institution.

Sadly In 1905 Popov became seriously ill and died of a brain hemorrhage on January 13, 1906. However his valuable contributions have been remembered: A minor planet, 3074 Popov, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1979, is named after him. At ITU Telecom World 2011, Igor Shchyogolev, Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation alongside Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General of the ITU, inaugurated the “Alexander Stepanovich Popov” conference room at ITU’s headquarters in Geneva.

Karl Marx

Often described as one of the most influential people in human history, the German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx was born 5th May 1818. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement. He published various books during his lifetime, with the most notable being The Communist Manifesto and Capital; some of his works were co-written with his friend and fellow German revolutionary socialist, Friedrich Engels.

He was born into a wealthy middle class family in Trier, formerly in Prussian Rhineland now called Rhineland-Palatinate, and studied at both the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin, where he became interested in the German philosopher G.W.F Hegel , whose ideas were widely debated amongst European philosophical circles at the time. He became involved with a group of radical thinkers known as the Young Hegelians, who gathered around Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer. Like Marx, the Young Hegelians were critical of Hegel’s metaphysical assumptions. In 1836, he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, marrying her in 1843. After his studies, he wrote for a radical newspaper in Cologne, and began to work out his theory of dialectical materialism. Moving to Paris in 1843, he began writing for other radical newspapers. He met Engels in Paris, and the two men worked together on a series of books. Exiled to Brussels, he became a leading figure of the Communist League, before moving back to Cologne, where he founded his own newspaper. In 1849 he was exiled again and moved to London together with his wife and children. In London, where the family was reduced to poverty, Marx continued writing and formulating his theories about the nature of society and how he believed it could be improved, and also campaigned for socialism—he became a significant figure in the International Working men’s Association.

Marx’s theories about society, economics and politics—collectively known as Marxism—hold that all societies progress through the dialectic of class struggle: a conflict between an ownership class which controls production and a lower class which produces the labour for such goods. Heavily critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism, he called it the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”, believing it to be run by the wealthy classes purely for their own benefit, and predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, it would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism. He argued that under socialism society would be governed by the working class in what he called the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, the “workers state” or “workers’ democracy”.

He believed that socialism would, in its turn, eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called communism. Along with believing in the inevitability of socialism and communism, Marx actively fought for the former’s implementation, arguing that both social theorists and underprivileged people should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic change. Revolutionary socialist governments espousing Marxist concepts took power in a variety of countries in the 20th century, leading to the formation of such socialist states as the Soviet Union in 1922 and the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Many labor unions and worker’s parties worldwide were also influenced by Marxist ideas. Various theoretical variants, such as Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism and Maoism, were developed. Marx is typically cited, with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.

Marx sadly passed away 14th March in 1883 but is widely thought of as one of the most influential thinkers in history, and had a significant influence on both world politics and intellectual thought, and in a 1999 BBC poll was voted the top “thinker of the millennium” who profoundly affected ideas about history, society, economics, culture and politics, and the nature of social inquiry. Marx’s biographer Francis Wheen considers the “history of the twentieth century” to be “Marx’s legacy”, Marx’s impact is comparable with that of Jesus Christ and Muhammad. “Marx’s ideas brought about modern sociology, transformed the study of history, and profoundly affected philosophy, literature and the arts.”

Marx has been called one of the masters of the “school of suspicion”, alongside Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, and his ideas have led to him becoming “the darling of both European and American intellectuals up until the 1960s”. Marx has influenced disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, media studies, political science, theater, history, sociological theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology, and philosophy. Whose ethical message was a “morally empowering language of critique” against the dominant capitalist Society and his ideas led to the establishment of governments using Marxist thought to replace capitalism with communism or socialism, whilst his intellectual thought has heavily influenced the academic study of the humanities and the arts.

Samuel Morse

Samuel Morse The American contributor to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system and co-inventor of Morse code, was born 27th April in 1791 in Charlestown Massachusetts. He attended the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, after which he went on to Yale College where he studied religious philosophy, mathematics and science of horses. While at Yale, he also attended lectures on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day, and In 1810, he graduated from Yale with Phi Beta Kappa honours.

Samuel Morse was also an accomplished painter and whilst at Yale He supported himself financially by painting. He expressed some of his beliefs in his painting “Landing of the Pilgrims”, through the depiction of simple clothing as well as the people’s austere facial features. His image captured the psychology of the Federalists; Calvinists from England brought to North America ideas of religion and government, thus linking the two countries. This work also attracted the attention of the notable artist Washington Allston. Later Morse accompanied Allstone on a three-year painting study in England, where he worked to perfect his painting techniques under Allston’s watchful eye. By the end of 1811, he gained admittance to the Royal Academy. He liked the Neo-classical art of the Renaissance particularly the works of Michelangelo and Raphael. After observing and practicing life drawing and absorbing its anatomical demands, the young artist produced his masterpiece, the Dying Hercules. Morse eventually left England on August 21, 1815, to return to the United States and begin his full-time career as a painter.

Between 1815–1825 Morse painted America’s culture and life, including the Federalist former President John Adams, hoping to become part of grander projects as the The Federalists and Anti-Federalists clashed over Dartmouth College. Morse painted portraits of Francis Brown — the college’s president — and Judge Woodward, who was involved in bringing the Dartmouth case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Morse moved to New Haven and was commissioned to paint the Hall of Congress and a portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette, who was a leading French supporter of the American Revolution. From 1830 to 1832, Morse traveled and studied in Europe to improve his painting skills, visiting Italy, Switzerland and France, Some of Morse’s paintings and sculptures are on display at his Locust Grove estate in Poughkeepsie, New York. During his time in Paris, he developed a friendship with the writer James Fennimore Cooper, and On a subsequent visit he also met Louis Daguerre and became interested in the latter’s daguerreotype — the first practical means of photography. In 1825, the city of New York Morse was commissioned to paint a portrait of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, in Washington. Whilst Morse was painting, he received a letter from his father that read one line, “Your dear wife is convalescent”. Morse immediately left Washington for his home at New Haven, leaving the portrait of Lafayette unfinished. Sadly By the time he arrived, his wife had already been buried.

Heartbroken in the knowledge that for days he was unaware of his wife’s failing health and her lonely death, this encouraged Morse to pursue a means of rapid long distance communication. On the sea voyage home in 1832, Morse encountered Charles Thomas Jackson of Boston, a man who was well schooled in electromagnetism. Witnessing various experiments with Jackson’s electromagnet, Morse developed the concept of a single-wire telegraph. However Morse encountered the problem of getting a telegraphic signal to carry over more than a few hundred yards of wire. His breakthrough came from the insights of Professor Leonard Gale, With Gale’s help, Morse introduced extra circuits or relays at frequent intervals and was soon able to send a message a distance of ten miles (16 km) of wire. Morse and Gale were soon joined by a young enthusiastic man, Alfred Vail, who had excellent skills, insights and money. At the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey, Morse and Vail made the first public demonstration of the electric telegraph on January 11, 1838. and Today The original Morse telegraph, submitted with his patent application, is part of the collections of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution

Morse sadly passed away on 2 April 1872 aged 80, and is buried in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. However his legacy lives on and His valuable contributions to science and technology has enabled people to communicate long-distance and saved many lives. Even today Morse code is still the primary language of telegraphy and is still the standard for rhythmic transmission of data.