Electrical Telegraph - Morse Telegraphs

Morse Telegraphs

In the United States, the telegraph was developed by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail. Samuel F. B. Morse independently developed an electrical telegraph in 1836, an alternative design that was capable of transmitting over long distances using poor quality wire. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signaling alphabet with Morse.

On 6 January 1838 Morse first successfully tested the device at the Speedwell Ironworks near Morristown, New Jersey, and on 8 February he publicly demonstrated it to a scientific committee at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1843 the U.S. Congress appropriated $30,000 to fund an experimental telegraph line from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore. By 1 May 1844, the line had been completed from the U.S. Capitol to Annapolis Junction in Maryland. That day the Whig Party nominated Henry Clay at its national convention in Baltimore. News of the nomination was hand-carried by railroad to Annapolis Junction where Vail wired it to Morse in the Capitol. On 24 May 1844, after the line was completed, Morse made the first public demonstration of his telegraph by sending a message from the Supreme Court Chamber in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. to the B&O Railroad "outer depot" (now the B&O Railroad Museum) in Baltimore. The famous message was: What hath God wrought (from the Biblical Book of Numbers 23:23: Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!).

The Morse-Vail telegraph was quickly deployed in the following two decades. Morse failed to properly credit Vail for the powerful electromagnets used in his telegraph. The original Morse design, without the relay or the "intensity" and "quantity" electromagnets invented by Vail, only worked to a distance of 40 feet (12 m).

This was a practical electrical telegraph system, and subsequently electrical telegraph came to refer to a signaling telegram - a system where an operator makes and breaks an electrical contact with a telegraph key, which results in an audible signal at the other end produced by a telegraph sounder, which is interpreted and transcribed by a human. Morse and Vail's first telegraphs used a pen and paper system to record the marks of the Morse Code, and interpreted the marks visually, but operators soon realized that they could "read" the clicking of the receiver directly by ear. Systems which automatically read the signals and print formed characters are generally called teleprinters rather than telegraph systems. Some electrical telegraphs used indicators which were read visually rather than by ear. The most notable of these was the early transatlantic telegraph cable.

According to a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission heritage marker installed along Pennsylvania Route 230 near Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania in 1947 (see image at right), the first commercial telegraph line in the United States ran along a railroad right-of-way (currently part of Amtrak's Keystone Corridor) between Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1845. The first message, received on January 8, 1846, was "Why don't you write, you rascals?"

Earth batteries were used by early experimenters as energy sources for telegraphy. Such devices were used for telegraph systems in the United States as far back as 1859.

On 24 October 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph system was established. Spanning North America, an existing network in the eastern United States was connected to the small network in California by a link between Omaha and Carson City via Salt Lake City. The first telegram on that line was sent by Brigham Young, then governor of Utah which affirmed that the Territory had not seceded. It read "Utah has not seceded but is firm for the Constitution and the laws of our once happy country." The slower Pony Express system ceased operation two days later. Carson City has another claim in the history of telegraphs for the largest and costliest transmission ever sent came from there.

As the transcontinental telegraph was laid it passed through Nebraska where Republican sympathizers prior to the American Civil War were eager to gain statehood for Nevada before the next presidential election so that Abraham Lincoln would have enough votes to win. They rushed to send the entire state constitution by telegraph to the United States Congress, which approved it and sent it to the President for signature. They did not believe sending it by train would guarantee it would arrive on time. The constitution was sent on 31 October, just eight days before the election on 7 November 1864.