Paul Julius Reuter (born Israel Beer Josaphat; 21 July 1816 – 25 February 1899), later ennobled as Freiherr von Reuter (Baron von Reuter),
was a German-born British entrepreneur who was a pioneer of
telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
and news reporting.
[Paul Julius Reuter](_blank)
Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2004, The Gale Group Inc. He was a reporter and media owner, and the founder of
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was estab ...
news agency
A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency may ...
, which became part of the
Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational media conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it is headquartered at the Bay Adelaide Centre.
Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corpora ...
conglomerate in 2008.
Life and career
Reuter was born as Israel Beer Josaphat in
Kassel
Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...
,
Electorate of Hesse
The Electorate of Hesse (german: Kurfürstentum Hessen), also known as Hesse-Kassel or Kurhessen, was a landgraviate whose prince was given the right to elect the Emperor by Napoleon. When the Holy Roman Empire was abolished in 1806, its prin ...
(now part of the
Federal Republic of Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between ...
). His father, Samuel Levi Josaphat, was a
rabbi
A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...
. His mother was Betty Sanders. In
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
, Reuter met
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; german: Gauß ; la, Carolus Fridericus Gauss; 30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and science. Sometimes refer ...
, who was experimenting with the
transmission
Transmission may refer to:
Medicine, science and technology
* Power transmission
** Electric power transmission
** Propulsion transmission, technology allowing controlled application of power
*** Automatic transmission
*** Manual transmission
*** ...
of
electric
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...
al signals via wire.
On 16 November 1845, he converted to Christianity in a ceremony at
St. George's German Lutheran Chapel in London,
and changed his name to Paul Julius Reuter. One week later, in the same chapel, he married Ida Maria Elizabeth Clementine Magnus of
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
, daughter of a German banker.
A former bank clerk, in 1847 he became a partner in Reuter and
Stargardt, a Berlin book-publishing firm. The distribution of radical pamphlets by the firm at the beginning of the
1848 Revolution may have focused official scrutiny on Reuter. Later that year, he left for Paris and worked in
Charles-Louis Havas
Charles-Louis Havas (5 July 1783 – 21 May 1858) was a French writer, translator, and founder of the first news agency Agence Havas (whose descendants are the Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the advertising firm Havas).
Biography
Havas was bor ...
' news agency,
Agence Havas
Havas SA is a French multinational advertising and public relations company, headquartered in Paris, France. It operates in more than 100 countries and is one of the largest advertising and communications groups in the world. Havas consists of ...
, the future
Agence France Presse
Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency.
AFP has regional headquarters in Nicosia, Montevideo, Hong Kong and Washington, D ...
.
As
telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
evolved, Reuter founded his own news agency in
Aachen
Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...
, transferring messages between Brussels and Aachen using
homing pigeon
The homing pigeon, also called the mail pigeon or messenger pigeon, is a variety of domestic pigeons (''Columba livia domestica'') derived from the wild rock dove, selective breeding, selectively bred for its ability to find its way home over e ...
s and thus linking Berlin and Paris. Speedier than the post train, pigeons gave Reuter faster access to financial news from the Paris stock exchange. Eventually, pigeons were replaced by a direct telegraph link.
A telegraph line was under construction between Britain and Europe, and so Reuter moved to London, renting an office near the
Stock Exchange
A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for th ...
. In 1863, he privately erected a telegraph link to
Crookhaven
Crookhaven () is a village in County Cork, Ireland, on the most southwestern tip of the island of Ireland. With an out-of-season population of about sixty, it swells in the summer season to about four hundred, when the occupants of the seasonal ...
, the farthest south-west point of Ireland. On nearing Crookhaven, ships from the U.S. threw canisters containing news into the sea. These were retrieved by Reuters and telegraphed directly to London, arriving long before the ships reached Cork.
On 17 March 1857, Reuter was naturalised as a British subject. On 7 September 1871, the
Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (german: Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha), or Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (german: Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, links=no ), was an Ernestine, Thuringian duchy ruled by a branch of the House of Wettin, consisting of territories in the present-d ...
granted him the noble title of
Freiherr
(; male, abbreviated as ), (; his wife, abbreviated as , literally "free lord" or "free lady") and (, his unmarried daughters and maiden aunts) are designations used as titles of nobility in the German-speaking areas of the Holy Roman Empire ...
(Baron).
In November 1891,
Queen Victoria
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...
granted him (and his subsequent male-line successors) the right to use that German title (listed as Baron von Reuter) in Britain.
[.]
In 1872,
Nasir al-Din Shah
Naser al-Din Shah Qajar ( fa, ناصرالدینشاه قاجار; 16 July 1831 – 1 May 1896) was the fourth Shah of Qajar Iran from 5 September 1848 to 1 May 1896 when he was assassinated. He was the son of Mohammad Shah Qajar and Malek ...
, the Shah of
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, signed an agreement with Reuter, a
concession
Concession may refer to:
General
* Concession (contract) (sometimes called a concession agreement), a contractual right to carry on a certain kind of business or activity in an area, such as to explore or develop its natural resources or to opera ...
selling him all railroads, canals, most of the mines, all the government's forests, and all future industries of Iran.
George Curzon called it "The most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has ever been dreamed of". The Reuter concession was immediately denounced by all ranks of businessmen, clergy, and nationalists of Persia, and it was quickly forced into cancellation.
Marriage and children
In 1845, Reuter married Ida Maria Magnus, daughter of Friedrich Martin Magnus, a German banker in Berlin.
[Paul Julius Freiherr von Reuter](_blank)
Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2008, The Gale Group. They had three sons:
Herbert
Herbert may refer to:
People Individuals
* Herbert (musician), a pseudonym of Matthew Herbert
Name
* Herbert (given name)
* Herbert (surname)
Places Antarctica
* Herbert Mountains, Coats Land
* Herbert Sound, Graham Land
Australia
* Herbert ...
, who became the 2nd Baron (succeeded by his son Hubert as 3rd Baron), George and Alfred. Clementine Maria, one of his daughters, married Count , and after Stenbock's death, Sir
Herbert Chermside
Lieutenant-general (United Kingdom), Lieutenant-General Sir Herbert Charles Chermside, (31 July 1850 – 24 September 1929) was a British Army officer who served as Governor of Queensland from 1902 to 1904.
Early life and education
Chermside wa ...
, a
governor of Queensland
The governor of Queensland is the representative in the state of Queensland of the monarch of Australia. In an analogous way to the governor-general of Australia at the national level, the governor Governors of the Australian states, performs c ...
.
The 2nd Baron's brother George had two sons, Oliver (who became the 4th Baron) and Ronald. The last member of the family,
Marguerite, Baroness de Reuter
Marguerite, Baroness de Reuter (14 July 1912 – 25 January 2009) was a European aristocrat and the last surviving member of the family that founded the Reuters news service. She was the wife of Oliver, 4th Baron de Reuter, whose grandfather, Pa ...
, widow of the 4th Baron and Paul Julius Reuter's granddaughter-in-law, died on 25 January 2009, at the age of 96.
Death and legacy
Reuter died in 1899 at Villa Reuter in
Nice
Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. He was buried in
West Norwood Cemetery
West Norwood Cemetery is a rural cemetery in West Norwood in London, England. It was also known as the South Metropolitan Cemetery.
One of the first private landscaped cemeteries in London, it is one of the " Magnificent Seven" cemeteries of L ...
in south London
Reuter was portrayed by
Edward G. Robinson in the
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
biographical film ''
A Dispatch from Reuters
''A Dispatch from Reuters'' is a 1940 biographical film about Paul Reuter, the man who built the famous news service that bears his name.''Harrison's Reports'' review; November 2, 1940, page 174.
Story behind Reuters
Paul Reuter starts a messe ...
'' (1941).
The Reuters News Agency commemorated the 100th anniversary of its founder's death by launching a university award (the Paul Julius Reuter Innovation Award) in Germany.
See also
*
German inventors and discoverers
----
__NOTOC__
This is a list of German inventors and discoverers. The following list comprises people from Germany or German-speaking Europe, and also people of predominantly German heritage, in alphabetical order of the surname.
For the li ...
References
External links
*
*
*
3D photo scan of the Paul Reuters statue in London on sketchfab.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reuter, Paul
1816 births
1899 deaths
19th-century German businesspeople
*Paul
German mass media owners
British mass media owners
News agency founders
Barons of Germany
German people of Jewish descent
British Lutherans
Converts to Lutheranism from Judaism
German emigrants to England
Burials at West Norwood Cemetery
Businesspeople from Kassel
British mass media company founders
People from the Electorate of Hesse
Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
19th-century Lutherans
19th-century British businesspeople