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.
Harrison Gray Dyar
Dyar erected the first telegraph line and dispatched over it the first telegraph message ever sent in America — as determined by Levi Woodbury of the Supreme Court of the United States. Dyar had used over half a mile of bare electrical wire to transmit the message. He employed mechanical and electrical means that Samuel Morse used many years later for the telegraph system he patented in 1847. The author Munroe explains that Dyar made his telegraph line at least eighteen years before the actual materialization of the first practical Morse telegraph line that was made between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland.