Samuel F. B. Morse Opens the First U.S. Telegraph Line
On May 24, 1844, Samuel F. B. Morse inaugurated the first telegraph line in the United States, connecting Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland. This momentous occasion featured Morse’s inaugural message, "What hath God wrought," which marked a transformative shift in communication, allowing messages to be transmitted much faster than traditional methods. Prior to the official opening, some messages had already been sent during the line's construction, including news of political nominations that reached Washington ahead of physical transportation, showcasing the telegraph's potential for rapid information exchange.
Morse, initially a portrait painter and a prominent figure in the art community, conceived the idea for the telegraph after a discussion about electromagnetism while traveling back to New York in 1832. His work, alongside collaborators like Alfred Vail, led to the development of an electromagnetic telegraph system and the creation of Morse code, a series of dots and dashes that facilitated communication. The U.S. Congress funded the experimental line's construction, and although government ownership ended in 1847, private companies quickly emerged to capitalize on Morse's design. The telegraph played a crucial role in communication during the Civil War and significantly impacted the economic and social landscape of the United States. Samuel Morse passed away on April 2, 1872, having witnessed the profound influence of his invention on society.
Samuel F. B. Morse Opens the First U.S. Telegraph Line
Samuel F. B. Morse Opens the First U.S. Telegraph Line
It was on May 24, 1844, that the United States' first telegraph line was formally opened, with the initial message clicked out by the man who had produced the first practical telegraph instrument, Samuel Finley Breese Morse. The historic line stretched from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland, and carried as Morse's first officially telegraphed words the sentence “What hath God wrought.” Actually, however, earlier messages had been sent during the line's construction. One of them, on May 1 of the same year, had brought to Washington the news that the Whigs, meeting in Baltimore, had nominated Henry Clay as their candidate for the presidency. The telegraphed news, which arrived in Washington an hour before a train carrying the same information, heralded a new era of rapid communications.
Morse's invention followed a century in which Europeans, and some Americans, had experimented with the idea of communicating by electrically transmitted signals. His was not, as he thought for some years, the first electric telegraph to be proposed. There was, for instance, the detailed description of an electromagnetic telegraph published by Joseph Henry in 1831, several years before Morse completed construction of his first working telegraph on or about 1835. At that time, Morse was known mainly as a portrait painter and as the chief founder and first president of the National Academy of Design.
Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April 27, 1791, Morse was the son of the noted clergyman and geographer Jedidiah Morse and graduated from Yale in 1810 before studying painting at London's Royal Academy under Washington Allston. In the process of becoming one of the most respected American artists of his time, Morse had put in years of artistic effort, some of them impoverished, in such cities as Boston, Charleston, New York, and Washington. He had been studying art in Europe and was on his way back to New York, where the institution now known as New York University would soon appoint him professor of painting and sculpture, when his life was altered by a thought-provoking conversation on shipboard. The year was 1832 and the conversation, about the newly developed electromagnet, prompted Morse to wonder “why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.”
Morse immediately set down his original idea of an electromagnetic telegraph. Subsequently, he developed an apparatus involving a sender and a receiver, which was improved after much experimentation by the addition of Joseph Henry's magnet. Morse's most important contribution to the telegraph was a system of electromagnetic renewers or relays that made it possible to send long-distance messages by way of many stations and branch lines.
Politically, Morse was active in the anti-Catholic nativist movement and was its candidate for mayor of New York City in 1836 and again in 1841. In 1837 he gave up painting to work full -time on the telegraph, filing a caveat at the patent office in Washington, D.C., and also beginning a vain attempt to secure European patents. Leonard Gale, a scientific colleague at the university, and Alfred Vail, who gave financial and other assistance, became partners in Morse's enterprise that same year. A third partner, Representative F. O. J. Smith, was acquired in 1838 while Morse was trying to persuade Congress to construct an experimental telegraph line. By that year, Morse had also worked out the Morse code, an alphabet of dots and dashes for use with his machine.
In 1843 Congress appropriated $30,000 for construction of the experimental line from Washington to Baltimore, and Vail, who was more persevering than the other early partners, received Morse's first official message at the Baltimore end of the line on May 24, 1844. The same year, the Patent Office granted Morse his patent. Although Congress in 1847 decided not to continue the government's ownership of the 44-mile experimental line, enthusiasm for Morse's telegraph spread like wildfire. Numerous private companies were organized under his patent privileges. As new instruments were patented in the 1840s and 1850s, Morse, who had his own characteristic flair for controversy, found himself immersed in litigation. By 1854 matters had progressed as far as the Supreme Court, which upheld his patent rights.
By the time of the Civil War, the telegraph was playing an important communications role, particularly in the more industrialized North. Like the railroad and the McCormick reaper, the telegraph was important in the economic and social development of the United States. In contrast to Morse's lean early days, his last years were filled with honors and financial rewards. He died in New York City on April 2, 1872. Until the telephone came into use, Morse's telegraph provided the public with its only means of rapid communication.