Who Really Invented The Telegraph? 281
Fat Boy unslim writes "It's been 250 years since the publication of a paper describing the theory behind sending messages down a wire using electricity. Unfortunately, no one knows who wrote it." If you thought the answer was as simple as "Morse," this article may come as a surprise.
Had to be Al Gores great great great grandfather. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Had to be Al Gores great great great grandfathe (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Sir
I am calling to help you lower your long distance calling rates
Please respond
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Had to be Al Gores great great great grandfathe (Score:5, Funny)
Afterwards, his older brother, Samuel, beat the living daylights out of him for playing with his stuff.
What the first message really said (Score:2)
This game is my first work.
You're the first player.
I hope you would like it.
Re:Had to be Al Gores great great great grandfathe (Score:2)
Why this, and not MAKE*MONEY*FAST, or "Increase the Size of your Penis!!!", or "Radio Controlled Matchbox Cars!!!" or a personal email from Mariam Abacha begging you to let her give you $85 million United States Dollars, or...?
Re:Had to be Al Gores great great great grandfathe (Score:2)
Re:Had to be Al Gores great great great grandfathe (Score:4, Funny)
Ah. Must have been before the invention of the apostrophe.
Re:Had to be Al Gores great great great grandfathe (Score:2)
Re:Had to be Al Gores great great great grandfathe (Score:2)
It is the only punctuation mark to have absolutely no effect on pronunciation.
Not true, in some cases. I'm having trouble coming up with a non-lame example, but adding an apostrophe as a possessive to a word ending in "s" often adds an extra "es" sound to the end.
It could be none other than... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:It could be none other than... (Score:2)
Uh-oh (Score:5, Funny)
Inventor of the Telegraph? (Score:2)
Re:Inventor of the Telegraph? (Score:2)
I'm voting for Charles Manson.
Re:Inventor of the Telegraph? (Score:2)
I did (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I did (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I did (Score:2)
Re:I did (Score:2)
Let the inevitable Al Gore slams begin ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Let the inevitable Al Gore slams begin ... (Score:3, Funny)
In other related news, MS sued Renfrew's descendents over patents relating to the point and click interface that they invented.
Hmm... let's see, I involved Microsoft and a rather obvious abuse of patents, that should get me a +1 Funny, right? Damn, I wish I could think of a way to work AMD's overheating into it too, that would have been a slam dunk +1.
From the article.... (Score:5, Funny)
CM obviously stands for CowboyMeal, which is CowboyNeal's pen name.
Re:From the article.... (Score:2, Funny)
The Victorian Internet (Score:5, Informative)
I read this book shortly after it came out in paperback, and I have to say that it's fascinating. It discusses various early telegraph systems in detail, including those not using electricity at al. More importantly, it draws startling parallels between the telegraph's influence on 19th century society and the Internet's influence today, especially during the dotcom boom. This is a must-read for the true geek.
Re:The Victorian Internet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Victorian Internet (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The Victorian Internet (Score:2)
I think I found him (Score:5, Funny)
I have a neighbor that looks about that age, maybe it was him.
Re:I think I found him (Score:4, Funny)
No man can be my equal (Score:2)
Here We Are STOP Born To Be Kings STOP Are Princes Of Universe FULL STOP
CM (Score:2, Funny)
Morse invented the serial port :) (Score:5, Informative)
The Morse telegraph required only one wire (the return went through the Earth), which was a huge cost savings in the time before cheap insulation, and yet was a binary on/off transmission with the associated reliability advantages. The original Morse code (sometimes called "railway Morse") used four symbol lengths; once the Morse telegraph spread and eventually went wireless the "international Morse code" simplified this to only two symbol lengths; this is the code which is invariably used even today.
Re:Morse invented the serial port :) (Score:5, Interesting)
This is, of course, true of a lot of classic inventions. The person who is given popular credit for inventing them isn't necessarily somebody who built the thing from scratch, or even the first person who made one that really worked. It's usually the person who made the final few tweaks that pushed an invention from being an interesting curiosity or a minor but useful device into something that had widespread applicability. In many cases there's something of a tipping point. Until a key technological hurdle is crossed, the device is so impractical that nobody is willing to invest a lot of time, effort, and money into improving it. But when it crosses some threshold of practicality, it starts attracting capital investment that causes it to improve and spread into more and more applications, which draws more investment, and so on.
A classic case is James Watt and the steam engine. Steam engines had been in use long before Watt came along, but they were fuel hogs that were limited to use at coal mines where there was plenty of fuel just sitting around. Watt figured out a way of radically improving their efficiency (by using an external condenser) and thus pushed them from being an isolated curiosity to being a major industrial workhorse.
Re:Morse invented the serial port :) (Score:2)
Not invariably. Last I heard there were still some amateur radio nets for people who enjoy using American Morse code. They're probably few and far between, though, and getting fewer and farther as time goes on.
Elements of American Morse still pepper ham radio procedure today, actually. Probably the most widespread example is the signoff code "didididahdit daaaaaaaah", often incorrectly transliterated into International Morse as "SK" because those are the characters it sounds the most like. In reality that last dah is supposed to be a longer than normal one, and the symbol is American Morse for "30", which in early telegraph procedure meant "end of message. (This is also the origin of the mark "# # # 30 # # #" you often see at the bottom of press releases and similar documents.)
Re:Morse invented the serial port :) (Score:2)
It might have a history from old American Morse, but it's nothing "incorrect" about it being used in International Morse Code.
It is *not*
Re:Morse invented the serial port :) (Score:3, Informative)
It was supposed to say:
Actually the symbol ...-.- (written @ or <SK>) is the recognized International Morse Code symbol for End of Text, equivalent to ASCII 04h .
It might have a history from old American Morse, but it's nothing "incorrect" about it being used in International Morse Code.
It is not ... -.- (SK), just as the I.M.C. distress call is the single symbol ...---... (<SOS>) and not the three letters ... --- ... (SOS).
Re:Morse invented the serial port :) (Score:4, Funny)
Morse code was recently used by the United States on July 4, 1997 to mobilize the largest international airbattle of recorded history. Apple deserves some of the credit too, though.
Re:Morse invented the serial port :) (Score:3, Funny)
Psst: It was 1996. July 4th, 1997 is when the Americans recovered the galaxy on Orion's belt and returned it to an angry agressor.
Give societies their due (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect the question of "who invented this first" is often the wrong one to ask. It's natural to seek a simple, contained explanation for these things, but in reality almost anything that's more than trivial has a longer history to follow than just the inspiration of one person (or intelligence).
For instance just as another example, the question of who invented the toaster [toaster.org] seems like it might have a short answer, but the truth is that this pinnacle of culinary automation is the result of thousands of years [toaster.org] of refinement.
I certainly don't want to play down the importance of any one individual in inventing toasters or telegraphs, but that also means we can't play down all the others before them. So instead we might ask "what process was involved in creating X". The answer will probably be more interesting too.
Re:Give societies their due (Score:4, Informative)
Basically it followed the flow of technology backwards. Like "The space shuttle would not have been possible with out an ancient egyptian plow." and then documents key technologies that make up a modern civilization.
Anyway it was a great show.
Re:Give societies their due (Score:4, Informative)
http://home.earthlink.net/~billotto/Connections
I remember it being very compelling to watch.
Re:Give societies their due (Score:2, Interesting)
Found in my email archives...
Re:Give societies their due (Score:2)
Re:Give societies their due (Score:2)
Re:Give societies their due (Score:2)
Hell, my toaster is so dangerous I'm surprised the human race survived at all. We should have been wiped out in some sort of primordial toaster cataclysm. Maybe that's what killed the dinosaurs?
Other information on CM's identity (Score:5, Informative)
The identity of 'C. M.,' who dated his letter from Renfrew, has not been established beyond a doubt. There is a tradition of a clever man living in Renfrew at that time, and afterwards in Paisley, who could 'licht a room wi' coal reek (smoke), and mak' lichtnin' speak and write upon the wa'.' By some he was thought to be a certain Charles Marshall, from Aberdeen; but it seems likelier that he was a Charles Morrison, of Greenock, who was trained as a surgeon, and became connected with the tobacco trade of Glasgow. In Renfrew he was regarded as a kind of wizard, and he is said to have emigrated to Virginia, where he died.
No no no! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Other information on CM's identity (Score:3, Informative)
More interesting (to me anyway), is the text of the actual letter to the Scots' Magazine which can be found here [it.kth.se].
Both describe the system as using individual wires to which would be electrified using the spark from a Leyden jar, and depending on which wire you electrified, you would know which letter was being represented. Much of the decription could be used to credit CM with the invetnion of the telephone pole as well, since he/she describes how the wires would need to be suspended and insulated at the suspension points.
Curious though, is that it was originally identified as means for transmitting intelligence, yet the plan for constructing it was published in a magazine - an early proponent of Open Source I guess.
The second link also indicates that work on electric was performed as early as 1746 coinciding with the invention of the Leyden Jar itself, so I think the current Scotsman article may be a bit biased when it claims this CM is the real inventor of electric telegraphy. And that in the 1780's a system was proposed that would have used either a 5-bit or 6-bit 'binary' system for sending the signals over fewer wires - by having different combinations of wires signal each character (ie 00001 = A, 00010 = B, 00011 = C, etc.)
The answer is obvious (Score:5, Funny)
But what of the signature "CM Renfrew"? Captain Montgomery from Renfrew. Why no S for Scott? Unnecessary. Everyone from Renfrew (in those days) was a Scott. It was the ancestral home. It's so obvious, it's silly.
Damn. If we only new the name. (Score:2)
who invented anything? (Score:3, Interesting)
The same is true for most of the "great" inventions or ideas we celebrate. It is very rare indeed that a ground breaking new idea appears out of the mainstream, and when it does, it usually doesn't catch on until the mainstream catches up with it and someone else gets the credit.
communication application, not telegraph (Score:3, Insightful)
The true relevance can be seen from this quote
because other scientists experimenting with electricity at the time could not see any use for it in communications.
In other words, this CM was the first to imagine and publish this application for electricity. It was a great leap of intuitiveness. I do not believe it was, however, the telegraph, which needed other leaps of intuitiveness.
Reminds me of a dumb joke (Score:4, Funny)
The first Lord says that while doing renovations on their family castle they found a buried copper cable 2 miles long put down in the 1500's. This, he says, proves his family invented the telegraph hundreds of years before any one else.
The second Lord says that while doing renovations on HIS castle they found NO cable. THIS proves, he says, that his family was using WIRELESS, hundreds of years before the first Lord's family was using telegraph.
Nikoli Tesla's grandfather (Score:5, Insightful)
My recollection was (Score:2, Informative)
Here we go again! (Score:2)
Re:Here we go again! (Score:2)
You have obviously not spent enough time around soc.culture.greek [google.com] .... Didn't you know that everything was invented by Greeks, including America? Just ask Agamemnon. ;P
Morse Code (Score:2, Informative)
Earl of Sandwich (Score:2, Funny)
Samuel Morser invented Morse Code.
Plato invented the plate.
that is all
who really invented the wireless ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The most common answer would be Marconi.
This is completely incorrect.
The first wireless communication was invented by an Indian scientist named Jagadish Chandra Bose in 1899 (recognised now by IEEE). Of course he wasn't savvy enough to get patents and all and as in those times it was easy to suppress a scientific achievement from a thirld world colonial rules state. He is very respected in part of the country who studied science as a gift to mankind.
see some information here
http://www.minhas.net/culture/indianpeople/
http://www.tuc.nrao.edu/~demerson/bose/bose.
or otherwise google on "jagadish chandra bose".
As a further information he was the first scientist to discover and prove that plants have life.
Re:who really invented the wireless ? (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but this "discovery" predates Bose by, oh, say, thirty or forty thousand years?
(Not to detract from Bose, nor from any of the other great Boses, like physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, after whom the Boson is named.)
.
Re:who really invented the wireless ? (Score:2)
As all good Southerners know, you and others are wrong. Nathan B. Stubblefield invented radio. [wfmu.org]
(Being from the south, I just love blind siding people with that one, even if it really was only induction and not radio.)
Re:who really invented the wireless ? (Score:2)
Re:who really invented the wireless ? (Score:2)
Could the telegraph be invented today? (Score:5, Funny)
Naturally there would be the big patent fight, with various people and corporations suing back and forth, claiming credit for the invention. But even if that were settled, think of the resistance that there would be to the (new) idea of setting poles with wires strung between them:
Environmental groups: "Birds will be tangled in the wires.. and what about the effects of EMF on children?"
Religous groups: "God didn't mean for man to be able to communicate with other men in an instant fashion. The telegraph is an instrument of the devil!"
Rich people: "I don't want those ugly poles and wires in my neighborhood. They'll lower my property values!"
Poor people: "It's only rich people who can afford to send telegraphs, but they run all the wires through our neighborhoods. It's discrimination!"
Re:Could the telegraph be invented today? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Could the telegraph be invented today? (Score:2)
There has always been opposition to new ideas and new technologies. The Luddites are the most famous example because they violently opposed the introduction of steam engines. The explorer who introduced the raincoat to England was executed for possessing "Devil's Fabric". And innoculation - one of the great medical discoveries which eventually led to vaccination - was opposed by religious groups and medical doctors.
Re:Could the telegraph be invented today? (Score:2)
The explorer who introduced the raincoat to England was executed for possessing "Devil's Fabric".
ehhh, this one sounds pretty urban-legendish. Any references?
Re:Could the telegraph be invented today? (Score:2)
As a Morse... (Score:5, Funny)
An effort to claim Scots invented everything? (Score:2, Interesting)
The Scotsman story does contain an interesting error, claiming that the steam engine had not been invented in 1753. Truth was two Englishmen Thomas Savery and then Thomas Newcomen had built successful steam engines before 1753, which were being used to pump water out of mines.
In 1765 James Watt, a Scot, figgured out why Thomas Newcomen's steam engine didn't work well, and came up with a much better design.
Still, between telegraph and steam engine do we have a plot to claim Scotland is the source of all good things (ok, so it is often true, but...).
All I can say is... (Score:2)
(Change "di" to "." and "da" to "-" before decoding it here [cyberscout.org]. Sorry - it was the only way to get this post past
The times being what they were... (Score:2)
Of course, nobody knows either way regarding CM and likely never will know. But it is worth pausing for a moment and reflecting on not only the random nature of fame and recognition, but also how many great discoveries we certainly have lost over the centuries because someone was not allowed to write, or speak or even to dream.
I don't know if things have changed much even now, but it has always been my greatest hope that the ubiquitous Internet would serve to unlock some of that untapped and otherwise lost human potential. IP laws, software patents, and the thugs seeking to control the flow of information aside, there are surely a lot of new voices out there to be heard, and new ideas they can share with us to help take us to the next great era of discovery and global progress. In the shadow of looming wars and unrest, AIDS and WMDs, and all the other noise of our discontent it is comforting to think that this might indeed be so.
Um, batteries were invented 1000s of years ago (Score:2)
More Info [discovery.com]
Some More Info [answersingenesis.org]
Re:Um, batteries were invented 1000s of years ago (Score:2)
A cattle prod typically has a single 1.5 volt D cell, it just charges a capacitor and uses a coil to create the momentary burst to cause a shock.
Don't knock the battery just because it's only 1.5 volts...
Heroes of the Telegraph by John Munro (Score:2, Interesting)
"If it's not Scotish... (Score:4, Funny)
Morse Code (Score:2, Insightful)
Excellent example for teachers (Score:2)
"Do you want to be like that guy who invented the telegraph? Hmmm? Nobody knows his name because he didn't put it on his paper either..."
It ought to work better than my moms "Eat your breakfast! Don't you know kids are starving in China?!"
Re:And while were at it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And while were at it (Score:2)
What he did invent was the industrial research lab. Rather being a solitary inventor, he had scores of assistants, and he'd flit from project to project, giving direction, and taking credit.
Re:And while were at it (Score:2)
Geography? (Score:2)
I'm sure Marcino picked some obscure Scottish town he'd never heard of, and picked a Scottish journal. Since he hated recognition and all. Oh, and he was born in 1874 - which was just a BIT late.
Re:Addendum (Score:2)
You mean that guy who knocked off Tesla's invention?
Re:Let me guess... (Score:2)
Re:Let me guess... (Score:3, Insightful)
Couldn't have been, either. The U.S. didn't exist in 1753. I think it's more remarkable that this article predated the battery... this guy was really thinking ahead of his time.
American theft? (Score:2)
Anti-American rants are of course terribly fashionable, but that's a weird example to give. Most of Gates' nonnovations were stolen from other American companies.
Re:Fluff (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Easy question! (Score:2, Funny)
I say it was a Tesla. According to this here slashdot thingy Tesla is responsible for everything that ever was and will be invented. All Hail Nikola Tesla!
Re:Easy question! (Score:2)
The "CM" is not initials. They are really his favorite musical note and another note he was still working on.
Re:Another example (Score:2)
Re:Another example (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, the first person to "discover" America was wandered over a land bridge from eastern Siberia some 10,000 - 15,000 years ago.
Columbus wasn't a Spaniard! (Score:4, Informative)
Columbus was Genovese! He was only working for the Spanish.
Re:Another example (Score:4, Insightful)
There is such a thing as multiple discovery. The reason that Columbus is given credit for discovering the New World is because his discovery was the historically significant one. The response to previous discoveries of America was minor and historically unimportant; none of those other travelers started significant, long lasting communication between the New and Old World. That's why Columbus was able to re-discover it independently. The previous discoverers' knowledge quickly died out. Columbus's voyage, OTOH, quickly lead to large scale trips between Europe and America, so that the two of them became socially, politically, and economically tied together. After Columbus, you couldn't discover America again because knowledge of it was too widespread for it to count as a discovery.
Re:homer must make his way into the post? (Score:2, Funny)
I guess you really can take it with you...
Re:Just more Brits trying to take credit from Yank (Score:3, Funny)
~Philly
Re:Just more Brits trying to take credit from Yank (Score:2)
Actually Baird was a poseur.
The first real TV system was assembled by the engineering dept of the BBC in a bake off that was set up essentially to shut Baird up.
They used a bunch of ideas that had been developed by others, in particular the cathode ray tube. They get the claim to invent TV because they were the first to do it over radio signals at a distance (as in Tele...)
Re:Just more Brits trying to take credit from Yank (Score:2)
Kintanon
Re:Does it matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
(1) Reading history would be tedious if it ceased to be about particular individuals.
(2) Historians need to know identities so that they can make connections. Was CM a woman, poor, rich, a prolific scientist, or someone who had one good idea? What else did CM do in life? We will not know until we identify the person.
(3) Honouring the dead may not serve a useful purpose but it is the right thing to do. What sort of person goes through life thinking "gee its nice that I enjoy all these benefits produced by people in the past, but I really couldn't give toss about the people who produced them, and certainly won't waste my time even trying to remember their names, let alone anything else about them". If you have children do you want them to remember that they had parents, and never mind who they were, or do you want them to remember you?
These arguments about who invented what might seem tedious, but they arise because we value the people who have contributed to the world that we live in. The day we stop having arguments like this is the day we stop carring about those people.