About this piece
- Title: Illinois
- Author: Sidney E. Morse
- Date/Location: 1842, New York
- Condition: Excellent
- Inches: 11 x 14 [Image]
- Centimeters: 27.94 x 35.56 [Image]
- Product ID: 308367
Extremely fine map of Illinois by Sidney E. Morse. Map of Indiana on verso.
Sidney Edwards Morse (1794 – 1871) was an American geographer, journalist, and inventor. He shared his innovative spirit with his brother, Samuel F.B. Morse, and his father Jedidiah Morse, who published the first geography book in the United States in 1784. He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, graduated from Yale College at fourteen, studied theology at Andover and law at Litchfield, and at sixteen began writing for a Boston newspaper. In 1823 he and his brother Richard established the New York Observer, which was widely hailed as the foremost religious paper in the country at the time. Morse took an active interest in science, geography and exploration. He was among the earliest to use the printing process known wax engraving, or cerography, for which he received the U.S. patent.
His best-known works are A New System of Modern Geography (1823), the North American Atlas, the Bible Atlas, and a series of general maps. For several years the sales of the two first-mentioned works averaged 70,000 copies annually, and more than 500,000 copies of his System of Modern Geography were printed.
