Historedia
Episode 1 of 1

First Telegram Transmission

When
1844-05-24
Where
U.S. Capitol
Part of
Samuel Morse sends first telegram from Washington to Baltimore

Morse sent the message "What hath God wrought" from Washington to Baltimore on May 24, 1844, officially opening the line.

The demonstration occurred from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the U.S. Capitol in Washington to the Mount Clare station in Baltimore. The phrase was suggested by Annie Ellsworth, who knew Morse was religious. This event marked the first long-distance electric telegraph transmission overland in the United States.

Sources

  1. Baltimore–Washington telegraph line Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-29
  2. Samuel Morse Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-29

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.