Telegraph operator. Historical artwork of a telegraph operator at Croydon airport, England, in 1928. He is using an electrical transmitter (lower right) to send a Morse Code radio message to an aircraft in flight. Electric telegraphy was developed in the nineteenth century. Samuel Morse (1791-1872) designed the Morse Code in the 1830s for the transmission of telegraph messages. The code uses a series of dots and dashes to specify the letters of the alphabet. Taken from the London Illustrated News, 1928.