35 New Jersey Firsts – #29 – First Electrical Telegraph

by Alice Magdziak • August 6, 2014 • Third State • Comments (0) • 1631

New Jersey officially recognizes 1664 as the year the state was founded when land owned by the Duke of York was given to Sir George Carteret and John Lord Berkeley. That transaction record proclaimed that “said Tract of Land is hereafter to be called by the name or names of New Cesarea or New Jersey.” That makes this year New Jersey’s 350th Anniversary! To celebrate this major milestone, we’ve undertaken a project we’re calling 35 New Jersey Firsts where we highlight 35 things that first came to life in New Jersey.

The first electrical telegraph was sent by Samuel Morse in Morristown at the Speedwell Ironworks on January 11, 1838. Although most of the research and development had been done in the ironworks facilities, they chose a nearby factory house as the demonstration site. Without a repeater, the range of the telegraph was limited to two miles so the inventors set up two miles of wires inside the factory house for the demonstration. The first message was “A patient waiter is no loser.”

[via Wikipedia]