das@cs.ucla.edu (David Smallberg) (08/28/90)
In article <11313@accuvax.nwu.edu> hpubvwa!ssc!tad@beaver.cs. washington.edu (Tad Cook) writes: >S.F.B. Morse sent "What hath God Wrought?" when he demonstrated the >telegraph before members of Congress, when he was seeking backing for >his invention from the U.S. government. I wonder how the demo went. How did the observers verify that the message sent was the one received, and that no secret pre-demo arrangement had been made? I mean, they couldn't just phone Baltimore and ask! :-) Did they wait around for the train from Baltimore to arrive with a Congressman saying "We just got the message 'What hath God wrought?'. Is that what was sent?" David Smallberg, das@cs.ucla.edu, ...!{uunet,ucbvax,rutgers}!cs.ucla.edu!das
msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) (08/29/90)
Some recent items have had it that Morse invented telegraphy. Isaac Asimov says otherwise. From "Asimov's New Guide to Science": # For the work that led to the early application of electricity # to technology, the lion's share of the credit must fall to # Joseph Henry. Henry's first application of electricity was the # invention of telegraphy. He devised a system ... [where] the dying # signal [would] activate a small electromagnet that operated a switch # that turned on a boost in power from stations placed at appropriate # intervals. Thus a message consisting of coded pulses of electricity # could be sent for a considerable distance. Henry actually built a # telegraph that worked. # Because he was an unworldly man, who believed that knowledge should # be shared with the world and therefore did not patent his discoveries, # Henry got no credit for this invention. The credit fell to ... Morse. # With Henry's help, freely given (but later only grudgingly acknowledged), # Morse built the first practical telegraph in 1844. Morse's main original # contribution to telegraphy was the system of dots and dashes known as # the Morse Code. Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com