Harrison Gray Dyar was born in Harvard, Massachusetts back in 1805. He apprenticed as a watchmaker in Concord, Massachusetts. He left for Paris in 1825, returning to the United States in 1858. When he returned his interest turned to the newly developed technology of electricity.
He erected the first telegraph line and dispatched over it the first telegraph message ever sent in America. In 1868, he purchased the “Lindon Hill” estate in Rhinebeck, New York where he lived until his death in 1875. He was 71.
What you may not know about Harrison is that a decision by Levi Woodbury of the Supreme Court of the United States, he determined Harrison laid the first telegraph lines in 1826, a full eighteen years before Samuel Morse patented it in 1847. It may interest you but Samuel married the sister of one of Dyar’s associates named Charles Walker, Charles had worked with Dyar on the telegraph and had retained many of Dyar’s sketches. Funny how all the credit was given to Samuel, don’t you think. Only now you know the true story.
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