The New York Tribune - May 27, 1844. Reporting on the first city-to-city transmission of a telegraph message.

Four years after its demonstration, a 15 year old from Frankfort, Kentucky, James F. Leonard, learned how to "read" telegraph messages by listening to the long and short intervals between clicks of the stylus receiver. Early telegraph messages were printed, or embossed, on a paper tape -- a very slow process. The practice of "reading" telegraph messages by sound spread like wildfire.