The electromechanical age from 1840-1940 saw important advances that enabled the development of early computers. Key inventions included Alessandro Volta's battery in 1800, which provided a reliable source of electricity and allowed information to be encoded as electrical signals. Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1832 for electrical communication of text messages. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 for bidirectional voice communication. These inventions established telecommunication networks powered by electricity. Early electromechanical computing devices were also developed, such as tabulating machines in the 1850s, the Comptometer mechanical adding machine in 1885, and Herman Hollerith's punched card tabulating system used for the 1890 US Census. These early electromechanical devices demonstrated that