The telegraph patent

As telegraphy took hold in America in the mid 1800's, competing enterprises stretched telegraph wire and poles across the landscape. One such company -- the Washington and New Orleans Telegraph Company -- decided to extend a wire all the way from Washington to New Orleans, and remnants of that history still resonate throughout South Alexandria in the form of "telegraph road" signs. Interestingly... the new U.S. Trade and Patent Office (USPTO) is located at the South end of Telegraph Road! There's a little patent museum there that's worth a visit, and there are new eateries around that area too. I run here (by way of Eisenhower Ave.) on occasion, but it's also metro accessible (From the King St. stop, walk through the Duke Street tunnel & you're there (street parking is hard to find).

Developed by U.S. Inventor Samuel F. B. Morse in the 1830's, the telegraph was described (in patent #1647) as an "improvement in the mode of communicating information by signals by the application of electro-magnetism." Apparently, Morse's assistant, Alfred Vail, helped to develop the Morse Code signaling alphabet that gave value to the device, although Vail seems not to have received much credit (nor income) from his efforts. America's first telegram was sent by Morse on January 6, 1838, across just two miles of wire near Morristown, New Jersey. The message read "A patient waiter is no loser." (I'll have to remember that phrase the next time I'm stuck in traffic.)