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!"

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