Electrical communication is a modern miracle, and it has led to a more civilized, prosperous, and interconnected world. We, the people of the civilized world, rely on it for our jobs, relationships, and information infrastructure. You, holding your phone, or sitting at your computer desk, reading this independent article is a key example of that. – but where did it all begin?
With just four words.
“What hath God wrought?”
On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph and Morse code, made telecommunication history by transmitting those words between Washington, D.C. to Baltimore using his invention.
At least, this is what any plain Google search or history textbook will tell you.
But if you take a step back, you may be asking yourself questions similar to my own: how did Morse know that his invention worked before testing it that day? Did he think that his invention would work first try? Or did he test it earlier than we thought?
The simple answer to these questions lies in the Morse Code itself, which is the system of alphanumeric encoding used as the basis for communicating electrically through Morse’s invention, famous for its “dots and dashes” (represented as short and long bursts of electricity, respectively)
— — .-. … . / -.-. — -.. . – This is Morse for “Morse Code”
Morse had to know if his system of encoding was viable for communication, and records exist of Morse writing and decoding with his system on paper when the idea was initially developed, but there was no evidence that he tested it electrically before May of 1844.
Yet, 200 years later, we finally have some clues that show us a new truth, thanks to the declassification of countless government documents due to pushes from the Trump administration.
Among these documents include previously unknown information regarding public figures, historic lawsuits, and many message encoding and cryptographic cracking methods used in major wars over the last 200 years.
Looking through these recent releases ourselves, we found that one of the people tagged with the most shocking information was Samuel Morse himself. Details of his personal life – like his relationships, children, and travel documents, were all linked to his file on the Telegraph.
It is publicly known that Morse had four children, and rocky relationships with two women that he married throughout his long life, but these new files suggest that there was a third woman involved in his life.
Only known by one name, Krista.
To avoid any suspicion, lovers in an affair tend to avoid sending letters addressed to each other, so we were initially surprised when we found that there were countless letters addressed to Krista from Morse – then we opened one up, and everything fell into place.
It was all written in Morse Code, before anyone knew how to read it.
Pure genius.
Then we realized that these weren’t just hand written letters, these were transcripts from electrical, cross country Morse Code communications, dating back to March of 1842. Two whole years before the first public message.
We were eager to read the earliest of these transcriptions, and stumbled upon one sent on by Morse to an unknown receiver.
Opening it up revealed the following code:
— / — .-. / ..-. ..–..
“m or f?”
