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KF5JRV > TODAY 06.01.19 15:23l 55 Lines 2684 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 28768_KF5JRV
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Subj: Today in History - Jan 06
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<IK6ZDE<VE2PKT<N3HYM<KF5JRV
Sent: 190106/1415Z 28768@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.17
On this day in 1838, Samuel Morse’s telegraph system is demonstrated for
the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey.
The telegraph, a device which used electric impulses to transmit encoded
messages over a wire, would eventually revolutionize long-distance
communication, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1920s and
1930s.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born April 27, 1791, in Charlestown,
Massachusetts. He attended Yale University, where he was interested in
art, as well as electricity, still in its infancy at the time. After
college, Morse became a painter. In 1832, while sailing home from
Europe, he heard about the newly discovered electromagnet and came up
with an idea for an electric telegraph. He had no idea that other
inventors were already at work on the concept.
Morse spent the next several years developing a prototype and took on
two partners, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, to help him. In 1838, he
demonstrated his invention using Morse code, in which dots and dashes
represented letters and numbers. In 1843, Morse finally convinced a
skeptical Congress to fund the construction of the first telegraph line
in the United States, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. In May 1844,
Morse sent the first official telegram over the line, with the message:
“What hath God wrought!ö
Over the next few years, private companies, using Morse’s patent, set up
telegraph lines around the Northeast. In 1851, the New York and
Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was founded; it would
later change its name to Western Union. In 1861, Western Union finished
the first transcontinental line across the United States. Five years
later, the first successful permanent line across the Atlantic Ocean was
constructed and by the end of the century telegraph systems were in
place in Africa, Asia and Australia.
Because telegraph companies typically charged by the word, telegrams
became known for their succinct prose–whether they contained happy or
sad news. The word “stop,ö which was free, was used in place of a
period, for which there was a charge. In 1933, Western Union introduced
singing telegrams. During World War II, Americans came to dread the
sight of Western Union couriers because the military used telegrams to
inform families about soldiers’ deaths.
Over the course of the 20th century, telegraph messages were largely
replaced by cheap long-distance phone service, faxes and email. Western
Union delivered its final telegram in January 2006.
Samuel Morse died wealthy and famous in New York City on April 2, 1872,
at age 80.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@ICLOUD.COM
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