Richard Willacy, age 15, of Pinawa, Manitoba, Canada, for his question:

Who invented the Morse code?

The tap tap tap of the Morse code was invented by a painter. This is not so surprising when you recall that one of history's most imaginative inventors was the great artist Leonardo da Vinci. Samuel Morse was born in Massachusetts in the year 1791. As a student at Yale he was amused but not seriously interested in the new science courses. His ambition was to be a painter and he took himself off to England to study fine art. His work was good, but Americans did not appreciate it, though some of his paintings now are rated among our national treasures.

At the age of 41, the discouraged artist sailed home to America. Passengers on the ship were discussing the exciting new method for sending electric power through a wire circuit. Morse was fascinated and saw that this could be used to telegraph messages. His painting was forgotten and for 12 lean years he struggled to make his telegraph invention workable. On May 24, 1844, he used his dot dash code system to telegraph a message along wires strung between Washington and Baltimore. Natural¬ly the dot dash code was named in honor of Samuel Morse who invented it.