Lack of knowledge couldn't stop Samuel Finley Breese Morse. He lived in a time when inventors were popular heroes. A legend had taken root:
Yankee inventiveness could do anything. Fueling the "American myth" were the almost unbelievable careers of such men as Charles Goodyear,
Elias Howe, Eli Whitney, John Stevens, Robert Fulton and others.
So Morse plunged headlong into the search for a practical telegraph, one that could win the $30,000 prize offered by Congress for
a thousand–mile system. And in the end, the myth prevailed. American know–how triumphed. But the question remains: Did the
know-how belong to Morse?

When Leonard Gale, a colleague at the newly opened University of the City of New York, saw one of Morse's contrivances, he took
pity on him. Gale had read Henry's papers. He pointed out to Morse the need for insulation on the windings of his electromagnets,
and showed Morse how to arrange the battery circuit.

When Gale left to teach in the South, Morse journeyed to Princeton to seek advice from Henry himself. Henry corrected the errors
in Morse's system and explained that a single battery couldn't send a signal over the desired distance. The solution: Henry's relay.

In 1837. Samuel Morse was broke,  He rushed to Europe to secure foreign patent protection.
In England, he was told Wheatstone had already invented the electromagnetic telegraph; in Russia, Baron Schilling had beaten
Morse to the punch. But the Czar considered distant communication subversive and banned all publicity. On the continent, Morse
was told that Steinheil had invented the device and it could be seen at any railroad station.

Morse persisted. In 1840, he received his U.S. patent, in 1843, with assistance from the government. By 1850, Morse and his partners
were organizing a telegraph company to build a New York to Philadelphia line. At this point, Morse kicked out Vail (the actual inventor of the code )
and most of his early helpers.
NOTE:
Alfred Vail was a true inventor. It was he who worked out the final form of Morse's code, he who introduced the key, he
who reduced the machine to the final, compact form. And it was Vail who invented the printing telegraph that was patented in
Morse's name.
This is not intended to slander Morse, he was a mover and shaker of his time a shrewd business man and a good politician.
Without his efforts who knows when the telegraph system would have became viable.

The original telegraph receiver wasn't the familiar keyed system but actually printed dots and dashes on paper with a stylus.
Early telegraph receiver

Do you know what this is ?

A larger color image.

This crude version of the germanium point–contact transistor was developed by
 the research team of John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley at Bell
 Laboratories in 1948.
This is the first known working transistor.

How about this one?

The first integrated circuit.

Developed by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments.
 Texas Instruments and Fairchild Corp. announced their development of integrated circuits in  late 1958.

More to come, maybe.

Here is a very condensed history of coaxial cable nomenclature.

Now, in the beginning, coax impedance resulted from standard size wires and
tubing.  RG-8/U was 52 ohms, which resulted from the dimensions which were
quickly attainable in wire manufacturing in the 1930s.  RG-8A/U was the
same, except the jacket was made from a plastic which did not contaminate
the dielectric through migration of the plasticizer.  I recently had access
to some old Federal Radio and Telephone Labs records which contained quite a
discussion on dielectrics and jackets.  Plastic technology was pretty
primitive back then.  So was wire manufacturing, and braid overlaying.

In the 1960s all common coaxes were normalized to round number impedance
and issued new nomenclature, RG-8/U at 52 ohms becoming RG-213/U at 50.0
ohms.  RG-9/U became RG-214/U, and so on ad naseum.  RG-11/U was already
exactly 75 ohms, so it remained the same (and then moved on to M17/6-RG11).
RG-13/U, on the other hand, the double shielded half inch 74 ohm coax became
RG-216/U at 75 ohms.  The new numbered cables were, for all practical
purposes, the same as their predecessors, except for the impedance.  50.000
ohm network analyzers were now safe.

Then in the 70s came cable TV and other wide band systems, which encountered
performance problems due to unpredictable phase characteristics across the
frequency range.  This was found to be typically caused by repetitive
mechanical disturbances in the cable construction.  To fully qualify the
cables, swept frequency performance measurements were added to MIL-C-17E,
and the nomenclature changed yet again to the present M17/+++.  Now, you
don't see much of this 'new' M17/+++ stuff in ham use because it is another
increment more expensive, and hams typically don't have requirements for
wide band, predictable phase characteristics anyway.  But, RG-213/U, which we
had just gotten used to then became M17/163-00001, the cheaper non-swept
direct equivalent, or M17/74-RG213 for the more expensive version swept from
50 MHz to 1 GHz.  And cable bearing that nomenclature better meet the
specifications of the current MIL-C-17.

Now, just to be clear, there is no rule anywhere against anyone with cable
manufacturing facilities making coax of any kind and quality (or even rope
or water hose for that matter), and labeling it RG-8, or RG-213, or
RG-(anything else).  So asking about RG-8 (or RG-213) is like asking what
the impedance of a wet noodle is.

Finally, a quote from the MIL-C-17 page in the Times Fiber RF Transmission
Line Handbook pretty well summarizes it, even better than the specification
itself.  Especially the last sentence:

"Cables that are manufactured to MIL-C-17 specification no longer carry the
RG designation.  Instead, they are marked with an M17 designation.  For
example, RG-214 has been replaced by M17/75--RG214.  In the future, any new
cable design will be designated by a M17 number only.
"In addition to the M17 number, all cables are marked with the
manufacturer's name and government identification number, for example,
'M17/75-RG214, MIL-C-17, Times Fiber Communications, 68999, AA-3409.'
Cables that are not marked with all this information are not qualified and
there is no guarantee of their performance."
--
Crazy George

(Photo courtesy of Bell Labs.)