Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 07.djvu/510

 MORSE

MORTON

congress, and in several state legislatures memo- rial sessions were held in his honor. He died in New York city, April 2, 1872.

MORSE, Sidney Edwards, journalist and geographer, was born in Charlestown, Mass., Feb. 7, 1794 ; son of Jedediah and Elizabeth Ann (Breese) Morse. He was graduated from Yale, A.B., 1811, A.M., 1814, attended Andover Theo- logical seminary, 1817-18, and studied law at the Litchfield, Conn., law school. He suggested the name Boston Recorder for a religious weekly newspaper, and was its editor and proprietor from 1816 until it became the third in circulation of the Boston weekly newspapers. He was asso- ciated with his brother, Samuel F. B. Morse, in patenting and selling a flexible piston pump until 1823, when he removed to New York, where, with his brother, Richard Gary Morse, he founded and edited the New York Observer. He retired from active editorial work in 1858. In 1839 he was associated with Henry A. Munson in the development of a method of printing geographi- cal maps in colors. He also experimented with an invention called the bathyometer for facilitating the exploration of the sea bottom. He edited nearly all his father's geographical works ; re- wrote the duodecimo " School Geography " in 1820; the octavo, geography in 1822, and in connection with Richard C. Morse rewrote the " Universal Gazetteer ", 1823, preparing atlases to accompany these works. He is the author of: Premium Questions on Slavery (1860); and Cero- graphic Maps Comprising the WholeField of An- cient and Modern Geography, Chronology and His- tory. He died in New York city, Dec. 24, 1871.

nORTON, Henry, scientist and educator, was bom in New York city, Dec. 11, 1836 ; son of the Rev. Henry Jackson (q.v.) and Helen (McFarlan) Morton, and grandson of Gen. Jacob (q.v.) and Catherine (Ludlow) Morton. He attended the

Episcopal academy ■^^-^ at Philadelphia, and

was graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, A.B., 1857, A.M., 1860, and took a post-graduate course in chemistry. With his fellow stu- dents, Charles R. Hale (q.v.) and Samuel H. Jones, he translated the Hiero- glyphic, Demotic and Greek texts on the Rosetta Stone, and prepared the report by the Philomatheon society in 1859, for which he made all the

on the same published

chromo-lithographic drawings. He studied law, 1857-59, and was instructor in chemistry and physics at the Academy of the Protestant Epis- copal Church in Philadelphia, 1859-^9. He was lecturer on mechanics at the Franklin Insti- tute in Philadelphia ; was professor of chemistry in the Philadelphia Dental college in 1863 ; was appointed professor pro tempore of chemistry and physics in the University of Pennsylvania during the absence abroad of Prof. John E. Frazer in 1867-68, and in 1869, when the professorship waa divided, he filled the chair of chemistry. He waa appointed resident secretary of the Franklin In- stitute in 1864, delivering many lectures on light in the Academy of Music and Opera House, Philadelphia, w^hich attracted much notice in Europe and America, and was made editor of the Journal of the Franklin Institute in 1867. He became president of Stevens Institute of Tech- nology at Hoboken, N.J., founded from a bequest of Edwin A. Stevens (q.v.), in 1870. The building was then being constructed, and President Morton selected the faculty and arranged the course of instruction. He was in charge of a party under the auspices of the U.S. Nautical Almanac office, which made photographs of the total eclipse of the sun in Iowa, August 7, 1869, securing many successful plates. In this connection he discovered the true cause of the "bright line" seen on photographs of " partial phases" during solar eclipses. His paper on this subject was. presented by M. Fay to the French academy. (See Comptes Rendus, Vol. 69, p. 1234.) He was. a member of a private expedition to observe the total solar eclipse, July 29, 1878, at Rawlins, Wyoming Territory. He was appointed a mem- ber of the lighthouse board in 1878, to succeed Joseph Henry, deceased (q.v.), held the oflSce until 1885, and conducted investigations on fog signals, electric lighting, fire extinguishers and illuminated buoys. The honorary degree of Ph.D. was conferred on him by Dickinson college in 1869 and by the College of New Jersey in 1871 ; also the degree of Sc.D. by the University of Pennsylvania and LL.D. by Princeton university, both in 1897. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical society in 1867 ; the Na- tional Academy of Science ; the American Chem- ical society and the American Society of Mechan- ical Engineers in 1873. He was married in 1863 to Clara Whiting Dodge of New York city. She died Sept. 20, 1901. at his country residence, Pine Hill, Ulster county, N.Y. He is the author of many articles on chemistry and physics, pub- lished in scientific journals of America and Europe. He was one of the ninety-seven judges^ who served as a board of electors in October, 1900, in determining the names entitled to a. place in the Hall of Fame, New York university..