Michael Faraday's recently invented electromagnet was much discussed by the ship's passengers, and when Morse came to understand how it worked, he speculated that it might be possible to send a coded message over a wire. The idea of using electricity to communicate over distance is said to have occurred to Morse during a conversation aboard ship when he was returning from Europe in 1832. The Growth of an Idea The laying of the cable-John and Jonathan joining hands, ca. The framers of this legislation had no way of knowing that when they used the word "telegraph" to refer to this visual semaphore system, they would be offered an entirely new and revolutionary means of communication-electricity. The young American republic wanted just such a system along its entire Atlantic coast and offered a prize of $30,000 for a workable proposal. In the eighteenth century, such systems used an observer who would decipher a signal from a high tower on a distant hill and then send it on to the next station. Most were visual or "semaphore" systems using flags or lights. Morse electrically transmitted his famous message "What hath God wrought?" from Washington to Baltimore on May 24, 1844, there were signaling systems that enabled people to communicate over distances. May 24, 1844, there were signaling systems that enabled people to communicate Morse electrically transmitted hisįamous message "What hath God wrought?" from Washington to Baltimore on Listen to this page Invention of the Telegraph
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |