[Amnorix]

January 6.

On January 6, 1838, Samuel Morse first successfully tested his new invention, the single wire electric telegraph.

This feat was a critical step in the “shrinking of the world”, and the first serious improvement in communications systems since someone figured out that carrier pigeons liked to go back to where they had came from.

The impact of the telegraph was immense. It was particularly noteworthy how valuable it was during the American Civil War when it permitted semi-centralized control over huge military forces over vast distances.

Morse, a brilliant man, was also full of seeming contradictions. Educated at Phillips Academy and Yale, he was primarily a painter, but his dabbling in science brought him everlasting fame. Although born in Charlestown, Massachusetts (current home of the USS Constitution), to a preacher, he was also a defender of slavery, considering it to be divinely sanctioned.