Tammy Lieber, age 8, of Lanesville, Ind., for her question:

WHO INVENTED THE TELEGRAPH?    _

In England, two physicists, William Cook and Charles Wheatstone, patented a telegraph in 1837 that worked by electromagnetism. In the United States, a painter and inventor named Samuel F. B. Morse patented an improved version in 1840.

Samuel Morse also developed a code system using dots and dashes which came to be known as the Morse Code.

Congress appropriated $30,000 for a test line in 1843 which ran between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Md. In 1844 Morse's telegraph flashed the first wired news story from Baltimore to Washington: the Democratic National Convention had nominated James K. Polk for president. Newspapers started using the invention almost at once.