Having been told about electromagnets in 1832, the American inventor Samuel Morse had spent three years trying to develop a telegraph based on electromagnetism. In 1835 Morse built his first device, an electromagnetic pendulum carrying a pencil in constant contact with a moving strip of paper. His partner, Alfred Vail, the son of a wealthy industrialist, had a more practical (and cheaper) suggestion - a lever at the transmitting end, operating an armature at the other.
But how to turn the opening and closing of the lever into letters and numbers? Another leap of imagination was required ...
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