Leila Morse (1878-1977), granddaughter of the American inventor, Samuel Morse, preparing her grandfather's original telegraph instrument to commemorate the centennial of the telegraph on May 24th 1944. Samuel Morse worked on the development of the electric telegraph from 1832. He demonstrated his code, a series of dots and dashes representing each letter, in 1838. After gaining financial support, Morse transmitted the first telegraph message in Morse code on 24th May 1844, along the new line linking Washington DC and Baltimore, USA. It read 'What hath God wrought?'.