Morse Code: connecting millions

+ next in series

"Attention, the Universe, by Kingdom's Right Wheel"

Samuel F.B. Morse's mysterious first message in February 1838 signaled a revolution in communication. He recognized the capacity of electric current to carry information, and he used Allesandro Volta's electric battery (the first stable source of electric current, developed in 1800) to provide the current for his invention—the telegraph. Morse's system of dots and dashes (first completed in 1844) translated numbers and words into electric impulses transmitted by a telegraph over copper wires and great distances to another telegraph. By 1861, the United States had telegraph lines stretching from coast to coast.

An international convention established International Morse Code in 1851, formalizing a number of variations on American Morse Code. Though developed for the telegraph, Morse Code worked with other signaling devices: flags, lights or torches, and the heliograph, a device that used mirrors to reflect the sun to transmit flashes visible for miles.

While businesses adapted telegraph communication to their purposes during the 1850s, military forces used the innovation most extensively. England used telegraphy in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, but it was the Union commanders of the American Civil War who translated the communication system into a formidable strategic advantage. The Union army even had mobile field telegraph service provided by wagon trains bearing miles of insulated wire and stacks of lightweight poles. The technologically inferior Confederate army's fastest messengers could not beat electric transmissions, so General Grant and his commanders often anticipated and countered General Lee's strategies well in advance.

The telegraph and Morse Code, though themselves enormous leaps in communication technology, soon led to even more powerful innovations: wireless radio transmission and voice telephony—both developed before the 20th century but largely unexploited until World War I.

The need to create meaningful, two-way connections continues to challenge organizations. How do you develop relationships with your constituents? How do you forge resonant connections? Effective communications can make a difference.

Throughout our nearly quarter century of helping organizations achieve their goals, we have developed communication programs that build connections on numerous levels for organizations of diverse scale and scope—start-up to centenarians. Explore our client credentials, learn more about how we think, follow the trail below to more information about Morse Code, or contact us to learn how we can help you build effective communications systems.

For more information

Wrixon, Fred B. Codes, ciphers & other cryptic & clandestine communication: making and breaking secret messages from hieroglyphics to the Internet. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc., 1998.

"American Civil War" Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th ed. 2002.

"Morse Code" Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th ed. 2002.

+
back to big ideas