On January 6, 1838, Samuel Morse and his assistant Alfred Vail successfully tested the first modern telegraph (literally “distance writer”) in Speedwell, New Jersey. The Morse telegraph was among several designs for electrical telegraphs, most notably one which used electric current to ring a bell (which had been invented at least twice before). The first message transmitted through the Morse telegraph was the slightly anticlimactic “Railroad cars just arrived, 345 passengers.” Five years later, Congress approved $30,000 to build a test wire between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. This time, for his first major public demonstration, Morse chose a more dramatic “What hath God wrought?”
Sources:
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/morse99.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Morse
http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/telegraph.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraph
it’s cool