How did the horses become the inspiration for the birth of the telegraph?

Connecting unrelated events is a common thinking technique that helps geniuses come up with unique solutions to overcome known knowledge.

In 1838 , the telegraph came to life so people could send and receive messages in the blink of an eye, a revolutionary milestone in the world of telecommunications history before radio and phones appeared. In the thinking of inventor Samuel Morse , how is the image of horses related to the telegraph?

The association between horses and telegraphy (telegraph) is an innovative thinking technique that we can train , according to author Michael Michalko, a world-renowned expert, author of many selling books. Running in the US for creative thinking, was an adviser to the CIA and many Fortune 500 companies.

In the Imagineer7 article, Michalko said that when people use their imagination to develop new ideas, it is primarily the ideas that can be predicted from the characteristics of concepts and groups that science knows. . In school, you are taught how to define, name and divide what you learn into separate groups. Different groups are separate and cannot touch other groups, very similar to cold stones on a tray.

When you study and group something, your thoughts about it start to freeze. For example, when you learned about telegrams, whenever someone mentioned "telegram", you knew exactly what a telegram was.

Samuel Morse invented the telegram, but when he tried to create a signal large enough to pass through large distances, he met a deadlock. The traditional solution is to use generators, however, larger generators are still not enough to power the signal transmitted from coast to coast. This problem caused Morse to think hard and find it difficult.

In his journal, Leonardo da Vinci writes that creative thinking requires you to be able to create connections and associations between two or more different topics, creating new groups and concepts. . You establish a connection between different topics to stimulate new patterns of thinking in your brain. These new templates create new connections and associations that lead to unique ideas that you can't have by using your common thinking.

At some point, imagine the thought of water. When you are born, your mind is like a glass of water. Your thinking is comprehensive, clear, flexible. All thoughts blend and combine, creating all kinds of connections and associations. That's why children are spontaneously creative.

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However, in school, you are taught to think in a limited, local way. When dealing with a problem, examine the ice cube tray in your mind and choose the right stone. Then you take a stone and put it in the glass of water, where your thoughts make the stone heat up and melt.

For example, if the problem is "supplying electricity to the telegraph across the coast," the glass of water will contain all that you have learned about telegrams, methods to power it, and nothing else. You are thinking locally, meaning you only think about what you have learned about telegrams and eliminate everything else. No matter how much water is stirred, the best thing you will create at the end is just a small improvement.

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One day, Morse was waiting to ride at a horse relay station. Waiting in his spare time, Morse contemplated ways to supply electricity to the telegram, thinking of tired horses being exchanged at the station. He had an observation that one could travel from coast to coast by changing horses at horse relay stations periodically. So he established a connection between supplying electricity with the exchange of horses at the relay station to solve his problem. The solution is to increase the periodic capacity for the signal being transmitted. That makes telegrams across the coast possible.

Morse tried to solve his problem by using a stone from the ice tray (telegram) without luck. Only when he put another stone (relay station for horses) into a glass of water, the two conceptual differences were mixed together to become a solution.

Da Vinci said that it is impossible to think about two different topics at the same time without creating a connection. Da Vinci named this technique " Connecting the Unconnected " (Connecting the Unconnected). In my creative thinking field, I (author Michael Michalko) discovered that this is a technique commonly used by geniuses to create different patterns of thinking throughout human history length.

(Photo: YouTube)

Samuel Morse and telegram

Samuel Morse (1791-1872) was an inventive American painter. He created electric telegraphy in 1838. The principle of transmission through wires at long distances was completed in the previous decade but Morse was the developer of the coded signal transmission medium. In the form of dots (.) and tiles (-) to bring this technology into practice.

Morse filed a patent application in 1840. Three years later, Congress gave him $ 30,000 to build the first telegraph line from Washington DC to Baltimore. On May 24, 1844, Morse sent the famous message "What is the God hath?" from the US Supreme Court in Washington DC to the B&O train station in Baltimore.

A message is sent as Morse: Marinha code by Brazilian-Navy Brazilian.(Photo: Research Gate).

In the United States, the growth telegraph system is symbiotic with the expansion of the national railway system, with lines following the rail and telegraph lines being opened at many large and small train stations nationwide. The telegram was once the primary long-distance communication medium until radio and telephone appeared in the early 20th century.