On January 6, 1838, Samuel Finley Breese Morse demonstrated his telegraph system for the first time. It was at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown NJ. The telegraph is a device that uses electric impulses to transmit encoded messages over a wire.
Morse was born on 27 April 1791 in Charlestown MA. He attended Yale University and was interested in Art, as well as electricity, which was still in its infancy at the time. After college he became a painter.
In 1832, while sailing home to Europe, he heard about the newly discovered electromagnet. That's when he came up with the idea for the electric telegraph. He had no idea others were already working on the idea.
He spent several years developing a prototype. He took on 2 partners, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, to help him. Finally, in 1843, he convinced a skeptical Congress to fund the construction of the first telegraph line in the United States, from Washington DC to Baltimore.
In May of 1844, the first official telegram was sent by Morse with the message: "What hat God wrought".
Samuel Morse died wealthy and famous at 80 years old on 2 April 1872 in New York City.
