Innovations That Connected Us

On January 6, 1838, Samuel Morse demonstrated his telegraph at Speedwell Iron Works, using electric signals to send coded messages.

Grace Hopper, pioneer of computer science, lived in Virginia later in life and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr is remembered for more than her acting—she invented a signal-hopping technology used in Wi-Fi.

On October 29, 1969, Stanford programmer Bill Duvall sent a single-word message—"login"—to UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, 350 miles away. Transmitted between two computers that each filled an entire room, this message marked the first communication between networked computers and is widely regarded as the birth of the internet.

The first USB flash drives hit the market in the late 1990s and were a game-changer. No more bulky floppy disks or slow CD-Rs—USB drives were small, portable and lightning-fast.