Alfred Lewis Vail (September 25, 1807 - January 18, 1859) was a machinist and inventor. He was a partner of Samuel F. B. Morse in the development of the telegraph. Following Morse' public demonstration of the marking telegraph on 2 September 1837, Vail partnered with him to perfect the instruments, especially the relay. September 25 is the 268th day of the year (269th in leap years). ... 1807 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... January 18 is the 18th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1859 is a common year starting on Saturday. ... A machinist is a tradesperson who specializes in making things out of metal or other solid material. ... An inventor is a person who creates new inventions, typically technical devices such as mechanical, electrical or software devices or methods. ... Portrait of Samuel F. B. Morse by Mathew Brady, between 1855 and 1865 Morse in earlier years Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor, and painter of portraits and historic scenes; he is most famous for inventing the electric telegraph and Morse code. ... Telegraphy (from the Greek words tele = far away and grapho = write) is the long distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters, originally over wire. ... September 2 is the 245th day of the year (246th in leap years). ... 1837 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ...

Vail is best known as the developer of the Morse code in the form close to as it is known today. For the use on the his original equipment, Samuel Morse developed the dictionary based code which encoded the whole words, and he used it in public demonstrations as late as of 1838. The same year, while working for Morse, Alfred Vail developed the encoding of the alphabet and the equipment which can be used in practice. Morse code is a system of representing letters, numbers and punctuation marks by means of a code signal sent intermittently. ...

Vail died poor (having had to sell stocks he owned at the time they were undervalued) and his contribution to the code was pushed by his wife Amanda following his death.

External links

• "[1] (http://speedwell.org/Vail/AVbio.html)". Alfred Vail Biography at speedwell.org

• "[2] (http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/tel/morse/morse.htm)". The Electromagnetic Telegraph by J. B. Calvert