Morse Code to Twitter; A History of Firsts

"Civilization grew in the beginning from the minute that we had communication."

So said Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who passed away in 2002. Heyederdahl, who was born in 1914, saw great developments in human communication in his time and understood the value that it has in the making of a community.

Today marks 168 year anniversary of the first American telegraph line and first Morse Code message sent from the States. The telegraph could connect people at great distances and proved very useful in trans-continental and eventually world-wide communication.

Today, of course, we have telephones, smart phones and computers to communicate across the globe. People communicate constantly through social media and sites like Twitter and the ease in which we can send messages to distant points is often taken for granted.

Today we are going to look at some of the firsts in mass communication, starting with the telegraph and going up through some of our modern forms of getting in touch and sharing our thoughts, ideas and, let's face it, what we had for lunch.

Morse Code:

According to On-this-day.com, on this day in 1844 Samuel F.B. Morse opened the first American telegraph line. The first message, sent from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, MD was "What hath God wrought."

Telephone:

According to Americaslibrary.gov, the first words ever spoken over a telephone were from inventor Alexander Graham Bell. On March 10, 1876, Bell called his assistant, Thomas Watson, with the message "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." Short, sweet and to the point.

Radio:

According to Wikipedia, on December 23, 1900, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, the "Father of Radio Broadcasting" spoke the first words carried by radio waves that were heard by another person. From Cobb Island in the middle of the Potamac River, Fessenden broadcast the line "One - two - three - four, is it snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen? If it is, would you telegraph back to me?" 

According to the article the Mr. Thiessen in question did in fact hear the message one mile away and confirmed that the broadcast was succesful in a telegraph.

Television:

According to Answers.com, the first television broadcast was done by Scottish inventor John Logie Baird in 1925 in England. Baird broadcasted the moving head of a dummy used by a ventriloquist from one room to the next.

According to Tvhistory.tv, the first commercial television broadcasts in the U.S. began on July 1, 1941 when the FCC activated call letters for two stations, WNBT (later WNBC) and WCBW, marking 'day one' of American television.

According to the article, the first game show on television was "Truth or Consequences" with Ralph Edwards and the first program was a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Philadelphia.

Internet:

The first message sent over the internet didn't work as planned, but will be familiar to anyone who has dealt with a computer crash.

According to UCLA.edu, the first message, sent over "ARPANET" was sent on October 29, 1969 between two computers at UCLA. The first message sent was "lo." This was not a precursor to "LOL" but instead was the first two letters of "login." Unfortunately, the system crashed before the full message was sent.

Cell phone:

Though there were some mobile phones that had been tested, the first real cell phone was placed on April 3, 1973 in New York City, according to Neatarama.com. The person making the call was inventor and Motorola employee Martin Cooper who made the call as a kind of brag against his competition. Motorala beat Bell Labs for the first cell phone and Cooper called his competitor at Bell from the streets of New York to rub it in on his 2.5 pound mobile phone.

Twitter:

According to the Twitter blog, in 2011 users posted roughly 200 million Tweets per day. But what was the first Tweet ever sent?

There are two answers to this question. The first two Tweets came from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006, according to the Huffington Post. Officially the first Tweet ever tweeted was an automatic message from Dorsey's account that said "just setting up my twttr." Ten minutes later the first human generated live Tweet came out, where Dorsey simply wrote "Inviting coworkers."

Our Firsts:

Burlington Patch's first Tweet was on a serious note after we heard of a . 

On Dec. 8, 2010 we wrote: "Happening Now: The Burlington Fire Department has reported a stabbing at Best Buy. no suspects and patient is uncooperative."

Our first Facebook post was more light-hearted and was an introduction to the site:

"Hello Everyone! Welcome to Burlington Patch's Facebook page. Patch will be launching in Burlington on December 10. We will be bringing you news from around town and featuring events and community stories. But we can't do it alone, so please stay in touch. We'd love to hear from you and have you be part of the story."

Your firsts

Now it's your turn. We'd like to know what you first Tweeted and/or posted to Facebook. If you'd like to share, put your firsts in the comments section below.

It's easy to find the first on Facebook if you use the new timeline. To find your first Tweets, rather than scrolling try this site: myfirsttweet.com - big timesaver!