welcome back to the ancestral findings podcast
today's modern telecommunications have origins reaching back almost 200 years
we can thank the telegraph and morse code here's the story of their invention
our modern telecommunications infrastructure which relies on mobile phones and wi-fi connections
actually has roofs that go much farther back in history than you may imagine instant communication
with people who are far away began in 1836. when samuel f morris an artist joseph henry a physicist
and alfred vale a machinist invented the electric telegraph machine the telegraph
revolutionized communications it sent electrical pulses along wires that were controlled by an
electromagnet on the receiving end where the message would go the electrical pulses were sent
in a series of dashes and dots with different timing between them to form messages that can
be received and translated into words with cables being erected across hundreds and even
thousands of miles it soon became easy to send an instant message to someone across the continent
someone in boston could send a telegraph message to someone in california
and the person in california would get it immediately in real time all they needed to do
was to go down to the telegraph office and pick it up or have it delivered to them there was no
longer any need to send letters that could take weeks months or longer to reach their recipient
communication could be sent and received at the very time it was actually still important with
the technological marvel that was the laying of a transatlantic telegraph cable on the ocean floor
this type of communication became possible around the world this was long before the invention of
the telephone it was the earliest known version of instant messaging or texting the code that was
invented to transform electrical impulses into words was named after morse though there were a
variety of telegraph codes used in different areas different countries and by different agencies
morse's code was the original prototype though and its name has stuck to this method of communication
which is still used today morse code has been in use for over 160 years this makes it the world's
oldest known method of electrical coding what is known today as international morse code
and is the standard version of morse code is a variation of the original code developed by morse
in 1848 friedrich clemens gerka modified the code for communications within germany he changed about
half of the morse code alphabet invented by morse and all of the numbers this became what is known
as international morse code and it was standardized as the common version of
the code in 1865 at the international telegraphy congress in paris it became the accepted method of
international communications with morse code the original code invented by morse became known as
american morse code and eventually was limited to use with american railroad communications now
it is only used in historical reenactments while international morse code is still
used to communicate with telegraphs around the world when electrical impulses were sent via the
telegraph they were received at the other end on a machine that had a stylus on it the stylus tapped
indentations into paper that was fed through the machine the indentations were the dashes and dots
associated with morse code telegraph operators at the receiving end would then translate the code
into letters and numbers to form a message all telegraph operators were trained to learn the code
so they could translate it morse's original code only used numbers it had a code book that had
words that corresponded to numbers and the book would be used to translate messages his telegraph
co-inventor alfred vale adjusted the numerical code to include numbers and special characters
this made the code more easy to send and read by all people basically it was a more user-friendly
form of morse's numerical code eventually feeding paper through the machine became unnecessary
telegraph operators were trained to interpret the dashes and dots being tapped out by the stylus
on their end and could transcribe them as the message came in it was also discovered
that people learned to interpret morse code more easily when it was taught as a language
that was heard rather than one that was read from a page it seems strange that the origins of
today's mobile telecommunications were invented so long ago yet the telegraph is what started it all
when it comes to modern communications we can thank samuel morse his co-inventors the telegraph
and morse code and what was that historic first message what half god wrought numbers 23 23.
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