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N0KFQ > TODAY 24.05.13 16:31l 36 Lines 1443 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - May 24
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Sent: 130524/1355Z 40357@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.54
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May 24, 1844:
What hath God wrought?
In a demonstration witnessed by members of Congress, American
inventor Samuel F.B. Morse dispatches a telegraph message from
the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail at a railroad station in
Baltimore, Maryland. The message--"What Hath God Wrought?"--was
telegraphed back to the Capitol a moment later by Vail. The
question, taken from the Bible (Numbers 23:23), had been
suggested to Morse by Annie Ellworth, the daughter of the
commissioner of patents.
Morse, an accomplished painter, learned of a French inventor's
idea of an electric telegraph in 1832 and then spent the next 12
years attempting to perfect a working telegraph instrument.
During this period, he composed the Morse code, a set of signals
that could represent language in telegraph messages, and
convinced Congress to finance a Washington-to-Baltimore telegraph
line. On May 24, 1844, he inaugurated the world's first
commercial telegraph line with a message that was fitting given
the invention's future effects on American life.
Just a decade after the first line opened, more than 20,000 miles
of telegraph cable crisscrossed the country. The rapid
communication it enabled greatly aided American expansion, making
railroad travel safer as it provided a boost to business
conducted across the great distances of a growing United States.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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