Telegraph Sparks: Instant Communication Born
The message traveled 2 miles of wire at Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey. It was January 6, 1838. Samuel Morse had been working on the idea for six years — since he'd learned on a sea voyage home from Europe that his wife had died, and the news had taken weeks to reach him. The telegraph was the answer to that grief. His partner Alfred Vail had refined the code: short signals and long signals, dots and dashes, enough combinations to represent every letter. The first public demonstration worked. But Congress took five more years to fund a telegraph line. Morse kept lobbying. In 1844, he sent a four-word message from Washington to Baltimore: "What hath God wrought." Within a decade, 20,000 miles of wire crisscrossed the United States. Ships could coordinate before they docked. Battles could be reported the same day. The world got smaller — the first time, but not the last.
January 6, 1838
188 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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