“What Hath God Wrought”

Today in History

On January 6, 1838, Samuel Morse demonstrated his telegraph system for the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey. The telegraph would eventually revolutionize long-distance communication and was a precursor to modern day, world wide media communication.  The telegraph reached the height of its popularity in the 1920s and 1930s.

Morse spent several years developing a prototype which he would use in 1843 to convince 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, with the message: “What hath God wrought!”

The famous Morse Code was invented with the telegraph to eliminate the need for a special telegraph dictionary, and the encoding and decoding of each word transmitted.  Instead, letters and numbers were represented by dots and dashes.

By 1866 the first successful permanent line across the Atlantic Ocean was constructed and by the end of century, lines were laid on nearly every continent.