Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791 - 1872) and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionised long-distance communication. it worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse developed a code (bearing his name) that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each letter of the English alphabet and looked for the simple transmission of complex messages across telegraph lines. In 1844, Morse sent his first telegraph message after an experimental line was laid overland from Washington D.C., Atlantic Ocean from the U.S. to Europe