187 years ago today, on January 6, 1838 (December 11, 1837 lunar calendar), the American inventor Morse successfully tested his telegraph for the first time in New Jersey. January 6, 1838 - Samuel Morse made the first public demonstration of the telegraph. European scientists gradually discovered the various characteristics of electricity in the eighteenth century. At the same time, some people began to study the possibility of using electricity to transmit messages. As early as 1753, an Englishman proposed the use of static electricity to shoot and send telegrams. His idea was to use twenty-six wires to represent twenty-six English letters. The sending party placed static electricity on the wires in text order. The receiving party connected small notes to each wire. When the note was raised due to static electricity, the text could be transcribed. The first truly operational telegraph line appeared in Britain in 1839. It was the Great Western Railway installed between two stations for communication. The 13-mile-long, pointer-like design was invented by Charles Wheastone and William Cooke. The two obtained a British patent for the invention in 1837. In the United States, Samuel Morse invented the telegraph at about the same time, and patented it in the United States in 1837. Morse also developed a method of encoding letters and numbers for transmission, called Morse code. Comments: An epoch-making invention at the time.