Daily Quiz for February 6, 2009

An artist. American telegraph pioneer Samuel F. B. Morse was, as well as an inventor, a well-known painter who gained a wide reputation as a portrait artist. Born in Boston in 1791, he graduated from Yale in 1810 and then studied painting in England for several years. Morse painted two notable portraits of Lafayette, was a founder of the National Academy of Design in 1826 and became professor of painting and sculpture at New York University in 1832?a position he held until his death in 1872. Morse invented the first practical recording telegraph in America and developed the Morse code, revolutionizing communication.