Media consumption
Eventually communication reached an electronic state, and the telegraph was invented. Harrison Dyar, who sent electrical sparks through chemically treated paper tape to burn dots and dashes, invented the first telegraph in the USA. The telegraph was the first piece of equipment that allowed users to send electronic messages. A more developed version came from Samuel Morse, whose telegraph printed code on tape and was operated using a keypad and an earpiece. The pattern of communication soon became known as Morse code.
Needle telegraph
A needle telegraph is an electrical telegraph that uses indicating needles moved electromagnetically as its means of displaying messages. It is one of the two main types of electromagnetic telegraph, the other being the armature system as exemplified by the telegraph of Samuel Morse in the United States. The principal needle system was the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, a system widely used in Britain and the British Empire in the 19th and early-20th centuries. However, the earliest needle telegraph was a binary coded multi-wire, multi-needle system invented by Pavel Schilling and demonstrated in St. Petersburg in 1832. Charles Wheatstone may have demonstrated one of Schilling's instruments in 1835 (that is, prior to his collaboration with Cooke to build a telegraph). Cooke definitely saw Schilling's needle instrument at a lecture of Georg Wilhelm Muncke in Heidelberg. It was this lecture that inspired Cooke to attempt building a telegraph, although he did not use needle instruments until Wheatstone came on board and suggested it.