"From Morse Code to Modern Marvels: The Evolution of Communication"

Hi, I'm Kevin. No, I'm not Kevin. What's the line? Hi, I'm Jack.

Hi, I'm Jack. And I'm Kevin. This is good company in the car. Music. She can't help it. The girl can't help it. She can't help it. The girl can't help it. She walks by. The mean folks getting cold. She can't help it. So I was going through the stuff down here in the basement. Well, I wasn't going through. It was just sitting here. And no, I wasn't. It was literally sitting right here. and it's from the Ohio Valley National Bank. And it's a little card. It's got a picture of a steam.

Sternwheeler. Sternwheeler. I guess on the Ohio River. Daily quarter saver. Quarter saver. Make dollars grow. Save at the Ohio Valley National Bank, Vienna, West Virginia. The biggest little city in the Ohio Valley. The biggest little city. And on the back, save a quarter a day. Inside, there's space for 20 quarters. And it shows you as you get to $1, $2, up to $5. When this book is filled, bring it to Ohio Valley National Bank and start or add to a savings account.

And then it has the hours, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, nine to two, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, nine, no, Thursday, Saturday, nine to noon, Friday, nine to seven. Wow. I believe my aunt Shirley worked at there. I know she worked at A Bank. I think it was Ohio Valley National Bank. So I was, we have Google meets everybody since COVID has it. And the other day I was on a meeting with two of my coworkers. One of them is in Montana and the other one is in Portland, Oregon.

And I was like, you know, science annihilates distance. Right. And I was thinking about how, you know, we can't live without that stuff right now. And then I was thinking about my phone and how. You hate it? I don't hate it, but I resisted getting a cell phone for the longest time. And I remember how clunky it was when you wanted to send a text message because you had to like click through the letters on the number. So if you wanted to say thank you, you know, it was like T.

I knew people who were really, really efficient at it. They had competitions back in the day with teenagers who could win, you know, text the fastest and these nine-year-old girls were winning it. And so I was thinking back about that and then telephones. And I was remembering when you're a kid coordinating with, you're going to play with a friend on Saturday, you told him Friday afternoon at school, all right, I'll meet you at noon on the playground,

you know, that kind of thing, or, or just how you had to manage. Yeah. And my rotary dial telephone. Yeah. So a few months ago we were driving on Telegraph road and I saw a marker saying this was the line along which the Telegraph originally ran. The Telegraph was considered the first. Point-to-point text messaging system. That's where the telegraph is considered that. And I forgot. And the telegraph of Telegraph Road fame is fascinating to me. And I was doing some research on it.

And I want to do just talk about telegraphs because it was the first kind of mass instantaneous mass media apparatus the world had ever known. Prior to this telegraph, there was optical telegraphs, which would be a series of towers. There was one famously in England, and the towers were spaced five to 10 kilometers apart, highly visible from the next tower. And they would destroy them like during wartime so that to prevent communications and stuff, didn't they? I think so.

But idea was to get, they had one in England and they would light fires and the fires would be, and they would extinguish them and turn them back on. It was sort of like a system. And they could be had a message from the South coast of England to the North of England in a matter of hours using these towers. So the telegraph of Telegraph Road fame, Did you know Morse code when you were little? I learned it in Boy Scouts.

See, I was in Boy Scouts too, but I never go to Boy Scouts. I didn't remember. I mean, I could do it, but I couldn't commit it to memory. I know SOS. Yeah. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Correct. And I think soldiers during the Second World War had to learn it. So if you, I think. But anyway, the telegraph, I didn't realize. I think of telegraph, I thought it was purely like an 1850s kind of thing and electricity. But they had built a viable company

battery back in the 1790s. It was called a voltaic pile, and it was a battery that could continuously provide electric current to a circuit. And so telegraphs, and Samuel Morris is the most famous telegraph developer. Samuel Morris started out as a portrait painter. He was an American. He was born in New York City, went to Yale. He was trained at the Royal Academy in England. He was painting portraits for royalty, for the presidents and things like that.

And on On a trip back from England to the U.S. one time, he started talking to a guy about the concept of a telegraph. And he stopped his painting completely and focused on developing a telegraph. And his was the first one where you sent a signal through a single wire and you make those taps. The previous one that it was in England, it was called the William Father Gill Cook and Charles Wheatstone developed it.

But there was one wire for each letter. So it took 26 wires and it only could go a distance of like several hundred yards and it just wasn't really useful. So anyway, with this one, Morse and his partners were able to convince the federal government to give him a grant. And they very famously connected the Capitol building with Baltimore.

And in May of 1844, Morse sent to Vail at the Capitol building the historic message, What Hath God Wrought from the Capitol in Washington to the old Mount Clary Depot in Baltimore? That was the first long distance. And it occurred. And that was all in Morse code. It was all in Morse code. So think about how, I mean, even though it's instantaneous or semi-instantaneous from the, you know, you click it and it clicks and you click it and it clicks, but you have to listen to all the clicks,

write down the things and then figure out the word. Right. If you're good at it, yeah. It's like, oh, S-T-O-P-O.

Space you know stop it is coming or whatever so if you're familiar with it i think it becomes very second nature and so anyway once they had kind of cracked the code on how to do it they realized that there were that they could extend the telegraph lines almost infinitely if they had what they called relays which is pretty much just during the civil war the relays were about every 20 miles and it was pretty much just a battery

you know how like when you have a line of people and they're shoveling buckets of water onto a fire. So the Mars code signal is sort of like that bucket of water. And when it gets to the next person, that next person gives it a charge and it amps it back up. So it sort of pulses down the wire because the batteries were so weak that after a certain point, it needed to get reached, the signal needed to be recharged.

And these relays, as they were called, which were just batteries along it, would punch it back up. So the Washington to New Orleans telegraph company, which opened the Telegraph that runs on Telegraph Road. Because it literally runs down the East Coast. Run down the Telegraph. And so they had hundreds of these relay stations, but they pretty much realized early that they might as well just run them along railroad right-of-ways because they're already in place.

So Telegraph lines sprung up along railway routes. And they knew when this first started in the early 1850s, the media was like, this is revolutionizing communication because we're now going to be able to get stories. And this was even before it was connected across the country, just locally, getting stuff from Washington to Baltimore was, you know, momentous.

When do you think it was the last time technology awed you? Golly, I think at the casino the other night. Because I'm thinking, like, it has been a really long time. Like, I think the last time I was genuinely wowed by technology was when I saw those, the walking robot, the dog robots and the walking robots. Oh, yeah, those are amazing. That's going to turn into something really big. Maybe not in my lifetime, but that's going to be the standard.

So imagine someone telling you, oh, we need to get in touch with great aunt Clara and she lives in, you know, South Carolina or whatever. And we have to tell her instantly, you know, the people who are older were like, that's not going to work. That doesn't work. That can't work. Wow, people. There was a, I had a list and I couldn't, couldn't find it again. And it was showing how in the 1850s, stations leapt up in leaps and bounds. Charleston is connected to

Columbia, South Carolina. Wilmington is connected to Virginia, Richmond. And it just boom, boom, boom. And every other month, another city was getting connected. And by 1855, there was 12,000 miles of telegraph lines in the country in five years. And during the Civil War, it was a major part of military operations. Telegraph was huge, ordinating armies across vast distances. So the Civil War is considered by many to be the first modern war, and that's one of the reasons that...

It was because the telegraph was involved. And in 1858, they made their first attempt at a transatlantic telegraph cable. 1858. And they ran it from Ireland to Nova Scotia. And the fact that they could do it at all. How did they? Yeah. They had 2,500 miles of cable on one ship, 2,500 miles of cable on another ship. And they were sailing boats. They were sailboats. They weren't even under power. They were sailing and dropping this line thousands of feet down on the Atlantic trench, right?

It broke a couple of times, but it did eventually work. And the queen sent a congratulatory message to the president about this new technology or whatever. It lasted for about three weeks and it broke. Well, of course. And not to mention with that, I know that that is a problem with those lines that they laid like that, like anchors and stuff would catch them and it would do damage to them.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't even know if you know this, but if, if you know this or not, but isn't it true that there's still a big, basically a big cable that runs across the ocean to this day because, or because the, the technology is not, even though we use satellites and stuff like that, the best, the best is that. Well, that's secure.

Hard wire or whatever it's called. Yes. And, and after that first transatlantic one failed, they continued, they, there were cables going across the Mediterranean, the Caspian, other companies continued. So by 1866, they had learned a whole lot about how they should compose the cables, what they should do and everything. And the one in 1866 worked. And ever since then, we have had a permanent electronic link with Western Europe.

Their slogan was from two weeks to two minutes was the slogan to get you to buy their, use their Morse code. So you could send a, in theory, you could send a message that would've taken. Close to two weeks on a transatlantic crossing in, you know. Okay. Because, you know, so the Titanic went down in, I think, 1912 or 1914. I think it's 1912. 1912. The telegraph operator on ships, that was still a new technology. Yeah. So the guy who was doing the telegraph on. But that was radio telegraph,

right? That wasn't. Well, yeah. But I mean, it's still Morse code and it's all this stuff. but it was, it was, I'm doing air quotes, new. Yes. That was very state of the art because there was even confusion on how to read it. If you, they didn't have that, if they didn't have that ability on other ships. Right. Okay. So that's, so, so that was, that was that long ago.

Yeah. But I, I didn't realize that there were experiments that they had in, in the late 1700s that they already had concept of a battery.

Yeah. And I think of electricity as being so I'm, you know, and when I'm thinking about people doing these things and inventing these things and morse is going to england to be a portrait painter and then he's coming back and he switches and he turns into this amazing inventor and he gets a patent all the way i do have made him really rich it did it did and his his his system and his the germans systematized it but it was his system

of dot dots dots and dashes that became worldwide standard the 1860s so i i think of them doing all of this prior to modern medicine and I was talking to you the other day. I'm like, how did anybody do anything? Everybody had parasites. Everybody was one of, you know, they had eight kids and there were the three that survived and everybody's got a touch of tuberculosis and somebody died from yellow fever.

I just, and you know, the germ theory and just the fact that they were able to exist and everything was by candlelight and, you know, in the middle of the night, if it's dark out, you don't do anything and, and, you know, building wire, everything, everything was analog.

And I just don't know how they did it you know i much prefer much prefer analog right because i don't have nearly the problems when i have a cord right when i'm trying to rely on wi-fi bluetooth right any of that stuff so the pony express the the east coast and the west coast were connected in october 24th 1861 in salt lake city utah so for the first time you could get a telegraph message from california all the way to New York City, almost instantaneously.

And the very next day, the Pony Express went out of business. I thought the Pony Express did more than messages. I thought they did like packages. I don't, I thought it was just primarily for, anyway. So the advent of the telephone in the early 20th century greatly reduced the use of the telegraph, but they were still in use. And you see them in movies, it's like, oh, you just got a telegram, you know? Right. And that was a big deal to get a telegram.

So anyway, so Telegraph Road at the bottom of the hill, that made me think about it. And that was the very first text messaging system. And now as I look at my phone, I feel naked without it. You know, that feeling, where's my phone? Right, right. And... I just think it was fascinating. And Telegraph Road right down there. And so I just wanted to talk about the old Telegraph for a little bit.

I am trying to find out what the Morse code family, I'm trying to find out their net worth. And apparently there's so many people named William Morse that it's very hard to find out of Morse code fame. He earned about the equivalent of about $12.7 million today. Wow. His estate. When he died in 1872, he had $12.7 million. Wow. Yes, but he was a real Renaissance man. His paintings are exquisite. I looked at some of them. He was an incredibly talented man.

And he fought tooth and nail to get that patent. And he said he's never fought so many pirates. He had a letter to one of his associates. Everybody was trying to rip him off and claim that they invented that. Because the telegraph, again, revolutionized the world.

It caught on like wildfire around the world. and Great Britain was connected to India in like the 1870s and you know the British Empire vast and sprawling but by the end of the 1800s the whole world was connected by telegraph it was just and a super so he that this man was so accomplished his artwork.

His just I mean wow wow just like and it's like and I have trouble like standing up and putting on my pants at the same time you know what I mean And not to beat a dead horse, but he died of pneumonia, a very curable disease, illness in 1872, he died of pneumonia. I remember I was in biology class. No, it was just science class. And it was maybe third grade. And the teacher was talking about antibiotics. And they said, has anybody here ever been sick?

Anybody here had pneumonia and had to be in the hospital for it. And I raised my hand. I said, yeah, I did a couple of years ago. And she said, if you were born before 1920, you would have died. And everybody's like, cool. They looked at me. I was like, and I was, I looked around at everybody like I would have. And the eight year olds, everybody kind of looked at me in awe. I just remember how ridiculous that was.

That's really funny. But yeah, but I just think of them working in those environments, no central heat.

Now, you know, just, just, you know, wool clothing and, and, you know, I, I just everything that they so there were so many health risks and gout and you know again tuberculosis or pneumonia or or just it's like uh infections what was that movie 10 000 ways to die in the west or something like that with the the the family guy dude yeah did it talk about that was that what it was about everything can kill you yeah like i don't want to leave the house you know yeah it's the

truth i just and i don't know how they they did it i mean this is exquisite intelligent engineering and i i I don't know... I, it's like doing, imagine going camping and having to design a computer system in the woods. Really? With what, with, with the, uh, what's available to you. That's what I mean. In the woods. That's what I mean. Exactly. Exactly. Let's try to build a simple Smith and we'll melt down some rocks and see if

we can find some, you know what I mean? It's just that I'm dumbing it down, but I just don't know how they did it. But that's what is, what is the mother of the, the, uh, necessity is the mother of invention. But I mean, when we have a power outage, uh, you know, I'm like, well, I guess you're like, what do you do? Yeah. I'm like, I guess I'll go up and read, go to switch. Oh, that's right. I can't do that. Can't turn on the light.

You can't read cause there's no light. Right. So I'm like, well, I guess I'll watch something on the DVD. It's just that kind of shit. I'm like, dummy, there's no power. You, there's no power. Find some birthday candles and see if you can, or, you know, at seven o'clock.

Exactly. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So anyway, Telegraph, Telegraph road and local history. So. And I think for the most part, I mean, obviously the road, Telegraph Road is still there but I don't think it's completely connected the entire way but I know that Telegraph Road runs down the east coast, yeah it does anyway that's the Telegraph Road people those of you in Alexandria you know what we're talking about and thank Samuel Morris for kicking off the communication revolution thanks for listening.

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