Samuel Morse patented the electric telegraph
On this day · 20 June 1840
On June 20, 1840, U.S. Patent 1,647 went to Samuel Morse for the telegraph that would collapse distance into a stream of dots and dashes.
On June 20, 1840, the U.S. Patent Office issued Patent No. 1,647 to Samuel F. B. Morse for an “Improvement in the mode of communicating information by signals by the application of electro-magnetism” — in plain terms, the electric telegraph.
Morse’s system was not the first attempt at electrical signaling, but it was unusually practical. It made permanent marks on a moving paper tape and ran on a single wire with a ground return, which slashed the cost of stringing lines across a continent. Paired with the dot-and-dash alphabet developed with Alfred Vail, it turned messages into pulses anyone could decode.
A scrap of paper tape, patented in 1840, was the seed of instant long-distance communication.
The technology went into public service in 1844, when Morse tapped out “What hath God wrought” over a line between Washington and Baltimore. Within decades, telegraph wires laced the globe.
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