Charles Benedict Calvert telegraph, Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail. On April 9, 1844, Morse and Vail successfully tested their device by transmitting a message from the nation's capital to the Calvert home, Riversdale. This test came 45 days before the more celebrated event when Morse sent the message "What hath God wrought?" from Washington to Baltimore, along telegraph lines that ran above the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line near Riversdale. Calvert became president of the Prince George's County, Maryland Agricultural Society and the Maryland State Agricultural Society, and served as vice president of the United States Pomological Society. He founded the first agricultural
Old Supreme Court Chamber of the Capitol at the time, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, decided that the repairs would provide an opportunity to expand room space in the Capitol by dividing the chamber in half. The upper half would serve as a new chamber for the Senate (that area is now known as the Old Senate Chamber), and the lower half would be used for the Supreme Court. In 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first Morse coded message—which read "What hath God wrought?"—from this room. The size and structure of Latrobe's vaulted, semicircular ceiling were virtually unprecedented in the United States. The room is deep