"Alphabet"
From "The International Morse Code"
© Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

The Morse Telegraph
1830s-1840s

What hath Morse wrought!
This electromagnetic telegraph accompanied Samuel F. B. Morse's 1849 patent application for his method for marking dots and dashes on paper. Although he conceived of an electromagnetic telegraph in 1832 and built an experimental version in 1835, he did not construct a truly practical system until 1844, when he built a telegraph line from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, Maryland. His first message was a famous one: "What hath God wrought!"

	Patent #6,420; May 1, 1849
	Samuel F. B. Morse, born April 27, 1791, Charlestown, Massachusetts; died April 2, 1872, New York, New York
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