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1-800-1844: A telegraph and a train walk into a bar

What Hath God Wrought, indeed!

This week on 1-800-1800, Mabel tells Madeline what a telegraph is. She starts in 1792 with the one and only Claude Chappe, a man so passionate about the optical semaphore telegraph that he threw himself into a well, and then moves onto Samuel Morse, who gave the world not only the single-wire electromagnetic telegraph, but also this insane painting of Hercules:

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