Who invented the telegraph?

The invention of the telegraph is credited to the English inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone as well as the American inventors Samuel Morse, Alfred Vail and Leonard Gale. The telegraph allowed for long-distance communication by sending messages between devices by means of an electric current.

Cooke and Wheatstone built their telegraph in the 1830s, while Morse, Vail and Gale worked together to build their own telegraph in the United States. Morse created a system of communication in which the telegraph registered a set of long and short dashes assigned to numbers or letters on a piece of paper. This system became known as Morse code and highly improved communication with telegraphs.