What hath God wrought: the first long-distance telegraph message
“What hath God wrought” was the message Samuel F. B. Morse sent by electric telegraph on 24 May 1844, from the Capitol in Washington to his partner Alfred Vail in Baltimore. The words come from the Bible, Numbers 23:23, and were chosen by Annie Ellsworth. In modern English they mean “What has God done”, and they read as a cry of wonder at what the wire had just done.
It was the public opening of Morse and Vail’s line between the two cities, and it is the moment the telegraph, and Morse code with it, entered history.
What happened on 24 May 1844
By the spring of 1844 a telegraph wire ran the roughly 40 miles from Washington to Baltimore. Congress had paid for it as a test of Morse’s system, and the point of the day was to show that it worked: that a message keyed at one end could be read, accurately and at once, at the other.
Morse sat at the key in the Capitol. Vail was at the receiving end in Baltimore. Morse keyed the four words, and the instrument in Baltimore recorded them as they came in. As the story is usually told, Vail then sent the same words back to Washington.
Nothing physical had traveled between the cities. Only the opening and closing of an electric circuit had, and a code turned that into words. That is still the whole idea of Morse code: everything is built from on and off, and from how long each lasts.
Where the words came from
Morse let Annie Ellsworth choose the message. The story usually told is that she was the young daughter of his friend Henry L. Ellsworth, the Commissioner of Patents, that she was the one who brought Morse the news that Congress had voted to fund the line, and that he offered her the first message as thanks.
She chose a line from the Book of Numbers, chapter 23, verse 23. In the King James Bible the verse ends: “according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought”. The words belong to the prophet Balaam, who had been hired to curse Israel and found he could only bless it.
A few things about the phrase trip people up:
- “Hath” is the old form of “has”.
- “Wrought” is the old past tense of “work”, in the sense of “made” or “done”, as in wrought iron.
- The punctuation. You will see the message written both with a question mark and without one. In the King James Bible the verse ends with an exclamation mark: it is an expression of amazement, not a question.
What the message looked like when it arrived
The receiving instrument in 1844 was a register. A strip of paper tape moved through it, and each pulse of current marked the tape: a short mark for a dot, a longer one for a dash. The operator read the message off the tape afterwards, so the message arrived as a written record, not as a sound. There is more on these instruments in Morse code on paper tape: how telegraph registers printed it.
Two things about that tape would surprise a modern learner:
- It is not the Morse code taught today. The 1844 code was an early form of the code that became American Morse. The International code used on radio and taught today came later, out of European revisions. American Morse code vs International Morse code explains the difference.
- It was read, not heard. The first messages were read off the tape with the eyes. Operators soon learned to read the clicking of the instruments by ear instead, and on most lines the sounder replaced the register. But on 24 May 1844 the message was a line of marks on paper.
The phrase in today’s Morse code
If you sent the same words today, in International Morse, they would look like this:
.-- .... .- - / .... .- - .... / --. --- -.. / .-- .-. --- ..- --. .... -
Word by word:
| Word | International Morse | Length in units |
|---|---|---|
| WHAT | .-- .... .- - |
33 |
| HATH | .... .- - .... |
31 |
| GOD | --. --- -.. |
33 |
| WROUGHT | .-- .-. --- ..- --. .... - |
71 |
The lengths use the standard timing: a dit is 1 unit, a dah 3, the gap inside a letter 1, between letters 3, and between words 7. With the three word gaps, the whole message is 189 units long. At 20 WPM, where a unit is 60 milliseconds, that is about 11 seconds. At 13 WPM it is about 17 seconds, and at 5 WPM, a beginner’s pace, about 45 seconds.
It makes a good first practice message, because it mixes easy letters (T, A, H) with a long, lumpy word. Here is a way to work through it by hand:
- Write it out. Copy the Morse above onto paper, one word to a line, and say each letter’s rhythm aloud as you go: W is di-dah-dah, H is di-di-di-dit, A is di-dah, T is dah.
- Tap it. Tap it on the table with one finger, a quick tap for a dit and a held tap for a dah, leaving a clear pause between letters and a longer one between words.
- Mind WROUGHT. Its seven letters run long, and R
.-., O---and U..-sit side by side. Leave a full letter gap after each one, or the receiver will hear something else. - Decode it back. Hand your page to someone else and let them decode it with a chart. If they get a different word, look first at your gaps.
If you have a Mac and want to hear it, type the phrase into Write in Dot & Dash and press Send: the machine sends it, plays the tone and prints the dots and dashes on its paper tape, a modern nod to that register in Baltimore. It uses International Morse, so the tape shows today’s code rather than the 1844 one.
Was it really the first?
It is often called the first long-distance telegraph message, and that needs some care. Morse and Vail had tested and shown their equipment before that day, and other inventors were building electric telegraphs in Europe in the same years. What makes 24 May 1844 the date in the history books is that this was the formal, public opening of a line between two cities, with a message chosen for the occasion and a written record of it.
From there the telegraph spread fast, and the code went with it. The history of Morse code, from telegraph to radio follows what happened next, from the split into two codes to radio, ships and SOS.
Questions
Who sent “What hath God wrought”?
Samuel Morse sent it from the Capitol in Washington on 24 May 1844, and his partner Alfred Vail received it in Baltimore.
Where does the phrase come from?
It is from the Bible, Numbers 23:23, and was chosen by Annie Ellsworth. In the King James Bible it ends the verse as an exclamation of wonder.
What does “wrought” mean?
It is an old past tense of “work”, meaning made or done. “What hath God wrought” means “What has God done”.
Was the message sent in the Morse code used today?
No. It was sent in an early form of the code that became American Morse. The International Morse code used on radio and taught today is a later revision.