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First Public Demonstration

Name: First Public Demonstration
Start: 1838-01-11
Location: Speedwell Ironworks

When: 1838-01-11
Where: Speedwell Ironworks
Part of: Samuel Morse demonstrates his telegraph publicly at Morristown

Morse and Vail demonstrated the electric telegraph publicly at the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey, on January 11, 1838.

The demonstration occurred five days after the first telegraph was built at the Speedwell Ironworks on January 6, 1838. This event marked an early step toward the Information Age and established the site as a National Historic Landmark.

Sources

Morristown, New Jersey Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-05
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.