JAMES MACPHERSON: Christians and Technology

JAMES MACPHERSON: Christians and Technology

I was reading at the weekend about the communications revolution and learned that it was a man's unwavering faith in God that kick-started the whole thing ...

Samuel Morse began the information revolution with his invention of the telegraph in the 1830s. The son of a church minister, Morse had been studying art in Europe when on a voyage home he heard people discussing experiments in electromagnetism. He spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out how information could be sent electronically.

His American Electromagentic Telegraph and Morse code system was patented in 1837. He spent the next four years trying to convince governments and business to fund it. No-one would. He wrote in his diary …

"The only gleam of hope, and I cannot underrate it, is from confidence in God. When I look upward it calms any apprehension for the future, and I seem to hear a voice saying: 'If I clothe the lilies of the field, shall I not also clothe you?' Here is my strong confidence, and I will wait patiently for the direction of Providence."

Finally, in 1843, Congress gave Morse $30,000 to construct a line between Ballitmore and Washington. Within a year the line was finished and the first message sent was Numbers 23v23: “What has God wrought!”

Within a short space of time governments and businesses were relying on the telegraph for communications. Posted by James Macpherson at 12:49 AM