10/7/22
Newsletter120
The Crack of Dawn
I watched an interview with the late, great David McCullough last night and caught him in a mistake, which I didn’t think was possible. Mr. McCullough was discussing his newest book, The Greater Journey (which came out in 2011), one of his few books to not become a bestseller. It’s a collection of short biographies of Americans who lived in Paris between 1830-1850, one of whom was a man I began reading about as a kid, Samuel F.B. Morse. Morse was a painter and his most famous work is an enormous (9’ x 12’) painting of a room in Louvre Museum with 37 famous paintings on the walls. Morse painted the room and all 37 paintings and it was an immediate masterpiece. Also, while he was in Paris, Samuel Morse invented the telegraph and the Morse Code. He also became friends with Louis Daguerre, who had recently invented the "daguerreotype," the first practical method of photography, and Morse brought that technology back to the U.S. However, the inimitable David McCullough said that Louis Daguerre had “invented photography,” which is not true. Photography was invented in France in 1822 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who is probably not remembered because his name is so hard to pronounce. The oldest extant photograph was taken by Niépce in 1827—a picture of Le Gras, France, on pewter, that took 6-8 hours to expose. Louis Daguerre invented a method, also on a metal plate, that took minutes to expose. Anyway, cut to me last night utterly gob smacked, my mouth hanging open—David McCullough made a mistake? Will wonders never cease.
I became aware of Samuel F.B. Morse when I was eight years old. A song came out that was a big hit called Western Union by The Five Americans (I still have the 45-rpm record). In the refrain of the song the singer imitates a telegraph key making Morse Code, singing, “Dee-ta-dee-ta-dee dee-ta-dee-ta-dee . . .” which I thought was the cleverest thing I’d ever heard. This got me to go to the library and read about Samuel F.B. Morse.
For the science fair in junior high I made a two-way telegraph set with dry cell batteries that went over great. The next year for the science fair I announced that I was going to make a better, four-way telegraph. I guess somewhere in between I discovered marijuana. I recall like it was yesterday coming to the sudden realization, the night before the science fair, I had done nothing. And I had thrown out last year’s telegraph set. I worked late into the night putting together the crappiest-looking two-way telegraph set ever. When I got it all set up at school it didn’t work. I’m sure the batteries were dead, but I hadn’t gotten new ones. Thus came the ignominious end of my career in telegraphy.
Depending on what you read, Louis Daguerre is often cited as the inventor of photography, but alas, it’s not true. That I caught David McCullough, with his two Pulitzer Prizes, in an error may be the highlight of my whole life.
Good day.