Pierre Simon Laplace (1749–1827), a French astronomer and mathematician, first presented the transform that bears his name and its applications to differential equations in 1779.

Born of humble origins in Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy, France, Laplace became a professor of mathematics at the age of 20. His mathematical abilities inspired the famous mathematician Simeon Poisson, who called Laplace the Isaac Newton of France. He made important contributions in potential theory, probability theory, astronomy, and celestial mechanics. He was widely known for his work, Traite de Mecanique Celeste (Celestial Mechanics), which supplemented the work of Newton on astronomy. The Laplace transform, the subject of this chapter, is named after him.

Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872), an American painter, invented the telegraph, the first practical, commercialized application of electricity.

Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts and studied at Yale and the Royal Academy of Arts in London to become an artist. In the 1830s, he became intrigued with developing a telegraph. He had a working model by 1836 and applied for a patent in 1838. The U.S. Senate appropriated funds for Morse to construct a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. On May 24, 1844, he sent the famous first message: "What hath God wrought!" Morse also developed a code of dots and dashes for letters and numbers, for sending messages on the telegraph. The development of the telegraph led to the invention of the telephone.