Though under systems less original and effective than that of Morse, a first actual telegraph had been operated between Paddington and Drayton, England, a distance of 13 miles, in 1839, and one at Calcutta, India, for a distance of 21 miles, it was not until 1844 that the world’s era of practical telegraphy actually set in under the Morse system, which speedily superseded all others. In that year, amid the jeers of congressmen and the adverse predictions of the press, Morse erected the first American telegraph line in America, between Baltimore and Washington, a distance of 40 miles, and, to the confusion of all detractors, sent the first message over it on May 27 of that year. From that date the fame of Morse was established at home, and soon became world-wide. His system of telegraphy, with slight modifications, became that of all civilized countries. [Illustration: CYRUS W. FIELD.] As was to be expected in a century so full of enterprise as the nineteenth, a science so attractive, so useful to civilization, so commercially valuable, so full of possibilities, as telegraphy, could not remain at rest. Everywhere it stimulated to improvement and new invention and discovery; and as the century progressed, it witnessed in steady succession the wonders of what became known as duplex telegraphy, that is, the sending of different messages over the same wire at the same time. Again, the century witnessed the invention of quadruplex telegraphy, that is, the sending of four separate messages over the same wire, two in one direction and two in another. This was followed by the invention of Gray’s _harmonic system_, by means of which a number of messages greater than four are transmitted at the same time over the same wire; and this again by Delaney’s _synchronous multiplex system_, by means of which as many as 72 separate messages have been sent over the same wire at the same time, either all in one direction, or some in one direction and the rest in an opposite.