WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT?
BY DAN MILLER
(originally posted May 24, 2005)
A message containing those four biblical words made history on May 24, 1844.
That was the day Samuel Morse sent pulses of electric current along a crude line strung-up between Washington and Baltimore.
Using a series of dots and dashes, he devised a messaging code that became known worldwide as Morse Code. From that day forward until 1999, Morse Code was used as the international standard for maritime communication.
But it was on that day, 161 years ago, when the world started shrinking at an astounding rate.
The elapsed time between that first simple telegraph message -- and the communication marvels of today -- is a mere "blink of the eye" in the earth's history.
For tens of thousands -- perhaps millions of years -- human beings walked the earth with no means of long-distance correspondence.
Other continents might as well have been other solar systems.
Communicating with other villages might involve days of travel.
For instant messages, all they had were drums, cannons, large bells, smoke signals, fireworks, or perhaps really loud yelling.
And yet, (here's the part I often ponder) from prehistoric days, through thousands of years of evolving civilization, the raw materials needed to build radios, televisions, satellites, cable systems and computers -- everything -- were already in place, on the planet.
It's astonishing. The electromagnetic field (radio spectrum) was there, unseen by the caveman, just as it's unseen today by us..... but theoretically capable, even then, of carrying signals.
The iron ore and the copper were in the ground.....
The rubber was there in the trees and plants.....
The gases were already swirling in the elements.....
All that was required was for human beings to figure it out.
It makes me wonder..... what else is out there, already in place, sitting quietly in the vegetation, in the soil, in the atmosphere and the oceans, or quietly hiding in the elements...... waiting patiently for us to discover it, and unravel the wonders it will yield?
What other inventor, or scientist, will feel compelled to use the words, "What hath God wrought!"
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