Morse–Vail telegraph key, 1844

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A hand-operated electrical switch

Morse–Vail telegraph key, 1844

This wood-and-brass key, made by Alfred Vail in 1844, is believed to come from the first Baltimore–Washington telegraph line. Pressing its lever closed an electrical contact.

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At a glance

Collection: Technology
Section: Communications
Model: 150,000 triangles · 0.6 MB

Model coverage and boundaries

1 web meshes; 150,000 triangles; 3 embedded image textures. Source chunks/materials are not assumed to be physical components. No exploded view is offered.

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Evidence & model coverage

1 web meshes; 150,000 triangles; 3 embedded image textures. Source chunks/materials are not assumed to be physical components. No exploded view is offered.

Changes: Geometry and materials reserialized; Draco re-encoding may discard degenerate faces. Embedded textures reduced to at most 512 pixels per dimension. Original files retained privately.

Credit: National Museum of American History; Alfred Vail telegraph key, record nmah_1096762. Smithsonian 3D Digitization. Exact model and embedded texture package: CC0 1.0, verified on the item’s 3D-media usage control. Credit retained as provenance; no share-alike requirement.

Original model and provenance ↗ · CC0 1.0 ↗ · Subject information ↗

Meshes are normalized for viewing. Display size is not a measurement tool. This is an educational exterior/surface visualization; unmodeled interiors and hidden systems are not inferred.

File audit

Retrieved 16 October 2026. Original SHA-256: 20ba3a513fe7161c97efaa9eaa796ef298b1f892b13b03af6583ecfe37b4c6cd. Original and audit evidence retained privately. Full rights entry.