Alfred Vail and colleagues demonstrate a telegraph system using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code).

Alfred Lewis Vail was an American machinist and inventor. Along with Samuel Morse, Vail was central in developing and commercializing American electrical telegraphy between 1837 and 1844.

Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Ancient signalling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined, so such systems are thus not true telegraphs.

Morse code is a telecommunications method which encodes text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes, or dits and dahs. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the early developers of the system adopted for electrical telegraphy.

January 6 is the sixth day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 359 days remain until the end of the year.