I'm always interested in the relationship between art, invention and suffering. (I'll leave "joy," Robinson Jeffer's "whim in the air" for later when I'm actually feeling it).
I don't know if a case could be made for Nikola Tesla—he shot his brother's pony with a peashooter causing the horse to throw and kill his beloved brother, a loss that would haunt him for the rest of his life—but certainly a link could be made for Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph.
Before Morse became the father of modern communications he was an accomplished artist who studied under the likes of Benjamin West. In 1839,while he was painting a portrait of the Marquis La Fayette for the city of New York, he received news that his beloved wife Lucretia had died. By the time he returned home the funeral had been held and his loss was compounded.
Perhaps he was not directly driven to invent a faster communication system than the galloping letter at that very moment, but when he overheard some scientists deliberating on the speed of electricity through metal wires and theories about electromagnetic behavior, he connected the psychic and inventive dots.Within five years his telegraph system was launched through a line connecting Washington, DC and Baltimore. No longer would people have to wait days or weeks for bad or good news. I believe he longed to have had it available during his wife's lifetime.
"What God Hath Wrought."
Message transmitted to inaugurate the first U.S. telegraph line (24 May 1844). The biblical text, from Numbers, 23:23, was selected by Annie Ellsworth, daughter of the Commissioner of Patents. Annie Ellsworth was the first person to announce to Morse that his project had been accepted and would be underwritten by the U.S. Government. In return for the good news he asked her to choose a message to send during its christening. The phrase was repeated back to Morse by the telegrapher in Baltimore.
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