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Samuel Morse is born in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
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Morse enters Yale College at age fourteen. While at Yale, he earned money by painting small portraits.
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Morse's wife, Lucretia, dies suddenly at age twenty-five. By the time he is notified and returns home to New Haven, she has already been buried.
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Morse constructs a recording telegraph with a moving paper ribbon. Morse demonstrates his recording telegraph to Dr. Leonard Gale, a professor of science at New York University.
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Morse files a patent for the telegraph. After completing his last paintings in December, Morse withdraws from painting to devote his attention to the telegraph.
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Morse changes from using a telegraphic dictionary, where words are represented by number codes, to using a code for each letter. This eliminates the need to encode and decode each word to be transmitted. Morse demonstrates the telegraph to his friends in his university studio.
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Morse demonstrates the telegraph before a scientific committee at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute.
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Morse demonstrates the telegraph to President Martin Van Buren and his cabinet.
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Congress votes to appropriate $30,000 for an experimental telegraph line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland.
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