This Day in History: 1885-04-07

Granville T. Woods, a leading inventor of the 19th and early 20th centuries, patents an apparatus for transmission of messages by using electricity. Woods’s Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph enabled communications from moving trains, completely changing the operation of the railway system. The invention dramatically improved the safety and reliability of America’s transportation system, saving perhaps thousands of lives, by allowing trains to communicate with each other while moving on the rails.  Woods sold his telegraphony invention which was a system in which a telegraph station could use a single wire to send messages by voice and telegraph to American Bell Telephone Company. Learn more.