Hey, hi, hello. Welcome back to another post. This post is going to be talking about something I have talked about in the past. Historical significance. Now as most people know, the past is everything that has ever happened. Whereas history is specific significant events from the past that have left great impact. Now with this in mind lets dive into the post.

Now talking about historical significance I thought I would give an example of a significant event that impacted communication and technology. The invention of the telegraph and morse code. Before the telegraph was invented communication was different. It was different for each culture, for example civilizations in China, Egypt and Greece used drumbeats of smoke signals to communicate over long distances. Then the telegraph was developed in the 1830s and 1840s. Samuel Morse (the inventor) sent the first telegraph message in 1844 from Washington D.C to Baltimore Maryland. Until the early 19th century telegraphs were not wireless causing weather to effect to communication. The electric telegraph was then created allow contact with ships, trains, and places of longer distance. 

With the invention of the telegraph came the creation of morse code. Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail assigned letters to certain sets of dots and dashes. More commonly used letters got simpler codes compared to those less common. Nowadays we may no longer have telegraphs however we still use morse code. One of the main ones is SOS signalling. There are two main ways I know of to do this. One is three whistle blasts, this will usually get someone’s attention and someone will help. The second is to do the morse code for SOS (3 dots, 3 dashes, 3 dots) with a flashlight.

Before I delve into why i think this event is significant I want to explain what makes a historical event. A historical event is determined by historians. These events need to leave an impact over both time and distance (geographically). For example the creation of the atomic bomb is significant whereas buying chocolate milk instead of eggnog isn’t significant. 

Now, with the knowledge of what makes something significant I think that the creation of the telegraph and morse code is a significant event. Without the telegraph we would probably not have developed phones or a well known way of signalling for help. Now knowing this it’s strange to think what our lives would have become without Samuel Morse and many great inventors. 

Thanks for reading this post. If you want to learn more about the telegraph click this link. Stay tuned for my next post. 

Peace ✌️