An essay by John Melonakos
Startup Details from the Invention of Morse Code
In the early 1800s, Morse Code was developed for communicating over the electric telegraph. Everyone associates this invention with Samuel Morse, but the invention is more involved than that. Here are some startup details from this story:
- Samuel Morse came up with the original idea to have a code, but lacked technical skills
- Morse found a technical co-founder in Alfred Vail (16 years younger than Morse)
- The ownership arrangement between co-founders was 75% for Morse and 25% for Vail
- Vail further diluted his shares by giving half to his brother, leaving him with 12.5%
- Vail devalued his relative contribution because he was initially enamored by the idea of working alongside the esteemed Professor Morse
- The ownership arrangment also meant that Morse would get all the name-recognition and patent rights
- Vail simplified and perfected the prototypes and did most of the technical work
- Morse wanted to have a separate code for every word
- Vail realized the need for user-friendliness and developed a code based on letters
- Vail surveyed newspapers to determine which letters are most commonly used and gave those the shortest codes, e.g. “e” is most commonly used and is represented by a “.”
- The patent for the invention includes both Morse’s and Vail’s codes, but Vail’s name is not on the patent (i.e. Morse took all name-recognition for himself)
- Vail’s code was adopted due to its user-friendliness
- Vail walked away from the business before it took off and did not make much money, while Morse gained fame and money
It’s always interesting to see the human side of how inventions take shape. It’s a risky business, but sometimes entrepreneurs strike gold as in the case of Morse code.
See the video below for more background.
What historical figures do you look up to for their entrepreneurship?