US Patent: 1,647
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| Electric telegraph
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Patentee:
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| Samuel F. B. Morse (exact or similar names) - Poughkeepsie, NY |
| Manufacturer: |
| Not known to have been produced |
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Patent Dates:
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| Granted: |
Jun. 20, 1840 |
| Reissue Information: |
| Reissued as RE79 (Jan. 15, 1846) |
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Jeff Joslin
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Description: |
| This is the famous Morse telegraph patent. At the time of this invention telegraphy already existed but was not fully practical. The defining features of the Morse telegraph from its predecessors were that it made permanent marks on paper (the "register") rather than just twitches of a dial or some other evanescent effect, and that it required only a single wire which significantly reduced costs (the ground was used as the return path). A flurry of similar patents in the ensuing weeks showed that this was an idea whose time had come.But Morse was first so he reaped the lion's share of the benefits.The patent describes the required circuitry and mechanical components to transmit an electromagnetic signal along a wire, an encoding of characters and punctuation, a mechanism for allowing messages to be created in a process akin to type-setting, and then transmitted across the telegraph. Surprisingly, Morse never mentions anything like a telegraph key or anything else which would allow an operator to transmit a message directly without first encoding the entirety of the message via that type-setting mechanism. |
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