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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 Flag semaphore (from the Ancient Greek () 'sign' and - (-) '-bearer') is a semaphore system conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Informa ...
is a method of telegraphy, whereas
pigeon post Pigeon post is the use of homing pigeons to carry messages. Pigeons are effective as messengers due to their natural homing abilities. The pigeons are transported to a destination in cages, where they are attached with messages, then the pigeo ...
is not. Ancient
signal In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The '' IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing' ...
ling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined and such systems are thus not true telegraphs. The earliest true telegraph put into widespread use was the optical telegraph of Claude Chappe, invented in the late 18th century. The system was used extensively in France, and European nations occupied by France, during the
Napoleonic era The Napoleonic era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislativ ...
. The
electric telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...
started to replace the optical telegraph in the mid-19th century. It was first taken up in Britain in the form of the
Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph The Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph was an early electrical telegraph system dating from the 1830s invented by English inventor William Fothergill Cooke and English scientist Charles Wheatstone. It was a form of needle telegraph, and the first te ...
, initially used mostly as an aid to
railway signalling Railway signalling (), also called railroad signaling (), is a system used to control the movement of railway traffic. Trains move on fixed rails, making them uniquely susceptible to collision. This susceptibility is exacerbated by the enormo ...
. This was quickly followed by a different system developed in the United States by
Samuel Morse Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph ...
. The electric telegraph was slower to develop in France due to the established optical telegraph system, but an electrical telegraph was put into use with a code compatible with the Chappe optical telegraph. The Morse system was adopted as the international standard in 1865, using a modified Morse code developed in Germany in 1848. The
heliograph A heliograph () is a semaphore system that signals by flashes of sunlight (generally using Morse code) reflected by a mirror. The flashes are produced by momentarily pivoting the mirror, or by interrupting the beam with a shutter. The heliograp ...
is a telegraph system using reflected sunlight for signalling. It was mainly used in areas where the electrical telegraph had not been established and generally used the same code. The most extensive heliograph network established was in Arizona and New Mexico during the Apache Wars. The heliograph was standard military equipment as late as
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
.
Wireless telegraphy Wireless telegraphy or radiotelegraphy is transmission of text messages by radio waves, analogous to electrical telegraphy using cables. Before about 1910, the term ''wireless telegraphy'' was also used for other experimental technologies for ...
developed in the early 20th century became important for maritime use, and was a competitor to electrical telegraphy using
submarine telegraph cable A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried tel ...
s in international communications. Telegrams became a popular means of sending messages once telegraph prices had fallen sufficiently. Traffic became high enough to spur the development of automated systems—
teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Init ...
s and
punched tape Five- and eight-hole punched paper tape Paper tape reader on the Harwell computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle – creating a physical program loop Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage ...
transmission. These systems led to new
telegraph code A telegraph code is one of the character encodings used to transmit information by telegraphy. Morse code is the best-known such code. ''Telegraphy'' usually refers to the electrical telegraph, but telegraph systems using the optical telegraph w ...
s, starting with the
Baudot code The Baudot code is an early character encoding for telegraphy invented by Émile Baudot in the 1870s. It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2), the most common teleprinter code in use until the advent of ASCII ...
. However, telegrams were never able to compete with the letter post on price, and competition from the
telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
, which removed their speed advantage, drove the telegraph into decline from 1920 onwards. The few remaining telegraph applications were largely taken over by alternatives on the
internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
towards the end of the 20th century.


Terminology

The word ''telegraph'' (from
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
: () 'at a distance' and () 'to write') was first coined by the French inventor of the
semaphore telegraph Semaphore (; ) is the use of an apparatus to create a visual signal transmitted over distance. A semaphore can be performed with devices including: fire, lights, flags, sunlight, and moving arms. Semaphores can be used for telegraphy when ar ...
, Claude Chappe, who also coined the word '' semaphore''. A telegraph is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for telegraphy. The word ''telegraph'' alone now generally refers to an
electrical telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...
. Wireless telegraphy is transmission of messages over radio with telegraphic codes. Contrary to the extensive definition used by Chappe, Morse argued that the term ''telegraph'' can strictly be applied only to systems that transmit ''and'' record messages at a distance. This is to be distinguished from ''semaphore'', which merely transmits messages. Smoke signals, for instance, are to be considered semaphore, not telegraph. According to Morse, telegraph dates only from 1832 when
Pavel Schilling Baron Pavel Lvovitch Schilling (1786–1837), also known as Paul Schilling, was a Russian military officer and diplomat of Baltic German origin. The majority of his career was spent working for the imperial Russian Ministry of Foreign Aff ...
invented one of the earliest electrical telegraphs. A telegraph message sent by an
electrical telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...
operator or telegrapher using Morse code (or a
printing telegraph The printing telegraph was invented by Royal Earl House in 1846. House's equipment could transmit around 40 instantly readable words per minute, but was difficult to manufacture in bulk. The printer could copy and print out up to 2,000 words per ...
operator using plain text) was known as a telegram. A cablegram was a message sent by a submarine telegraph cable, often shortened to "cable" or "wire". The suffix -gram is derived from ancient Greek: (), meaning something written, i.e. telegram means something written at a distance and cablegram means something written via a cable, whereas telegraph implies the process of writing at a distance. Later, a Telex was a message sent by a
Telex The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electroni ...
network, a switched network of
teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Init ...
s similar to a telephone network. A
wirephoto Wirephoto, telephotography or radiophoto is the sending of pictures by telegraph, telephone or radio. Édouard Belin's Bélinographe of 1913, which scanned using a photocell and transmitted over ordinary phone lines, formed the basis for the W ...
or wire picture was a newspaper picture that was sent from a remote location by a facsimile telegraph. A diplomatic telegram, also known as a
diplomatic cable A diplomatic cable, also known as a diplomatic telegram (DipTel) or embassy cable, is a confidential text-based message exchanged between a diplomatic mission, like an embassy or a consulate, and the foreign ministry of its parent country.Defi ...
, is a confidential communication between a
diplomatic mission A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually den ...
and the
foreign ministry In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The entit ...
of its parent country. These continue to be called telegrams or cables regardless of the method used for transmission.


History


Early signalling

Passing messages by signalling over distance is an ancient practice. One of the oldest examples is the signal towers of the
Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand ''li'' wall") is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic gro ...
. In , signals could be sent by beacon fires or drum beats. By complex flag signalling had developed, and by the
Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
(200 BC – 220 AD) signallers had a choice of lights, flags, or gunshots to send signals. By the
Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom ...
(618–907) a message could be sent in 24 hours. The
Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han peo ...
(1368–1644) added
artillery Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...
to the possible signals. While the signalling was complex (for instance, different-coloured flags could be used to indicate enemy strength), only predetermined messages could be sent. The Chinese signalling system extended well beyond the Great Wall. Signal towers away from the wall were used to give early warning of an attack. Others were built even further out as part of the protection of trade routes, especially the Silk Road. Signal fires were widely used in Europe and elsewhere for military purposes. The Roman army made frequent use of them, as did their enemies, and the remains of some of the stations still exist. Few details have been recorded of European/Mediterranean signalling systems and the possible messages. One of the few for which details are known is a system invented by
Aeneas Tacticus Aeneas Tacticus ( grc-gre, Αἰνείας ὁ Τακτικός; fl. 4th century BC) was one of the earliest Greek writers on the art of war and is credited as the first author to provide a complete guide to securing military communications. Po ...
(4th century BC). Tacticus's system had water filled pots at the two signal stations which were drained in synchronisation. Annotation on a floating scale indicated which message was being sent or received. Signals sent by means of
torch A torch is a stick with combustible material at one end, which is ignited and used as a light source. Torches have been used throughout history, and are still used in processions, symbolic and religious events, and in juggling entertainment. I ...
es indicated when to start and stop draining to keep the synchronisation.David L. Woods, "Ancient signals", pp. 24–25 in, Christopher H. Sterling (ed), ''Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century'', ABC-CLIO, 2008 . None of the signalling systems discussed above are true telegraphs in the sense of a system that can transmit arbitrary messages over arbitrary distances. Lines of signalling
relay A relay Electromechanical relay schematic showing a control coil, four pairs of normally open and one pair of normally closed contacts An automotive-style miniature relay with the dust cover taken off A relay is an electrically operated switch ...
stations can send messages to any required distance, but all these systems are limited to one extent or another in the range of messages that they can send. A system like
flag semaphore Flag semaphore (from the Ancient Greek () 'sign' and - (-) '-bearer') is a semaphore system conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Informa ...
, with an alphabetic code, can certainly send any given message, but the system is designed for short-range communication between two persons. An
engine order telegraph An engine order telegraph or E.O.T., also referred to as a Chadburn, is a communications device used on a ship (or submarine) for the pilot on the bridge to order engineers in the engine room to power the vessel at a certain desired speed. C ...
, used to send instructions from the bridge of a ship to the engine room, fails to meet both criteria; it has a limited distance and very simple message set. There was only one ancient signalling system described that ''does'' meet these criteria. That was a system using the
Polybius square The Polybius square, also known as the Polybius checkerboard, is a device invented by the ancient Greeks Cleoxenus and Democleitus, and made famous by the historian and scholar Polybius. The device is used for fractionating plaintext characters s ...
to encode an alphabet. Polybius (2nd century BC) suggested using two successive groups of torches to identify the coordinates of the letter of the alphabet being transmitted. The number of said torches held up signalled the grid square that contained the letter. There is no definite record of the system ever being used, but there are several passages in ancient texts that some think are suggestive. Holzmann and Pehrson, for instance, suggest that
Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in ...
is describing its use by
Philip V of Macedon Philip V ( grc-gre, Φίλιππος ; 238–179 BC) was king ( Basileus) of Macedonia from 221 to 179 BC. Philip's reign was principally marked by an unsuccessful struggle with the emerging power of the Roman Republic. He would lead Macedon ag ...
in 207 BC during the
First Macedonian War The First Macedonian War (214–205 BC) was fought by Rome, allied (after 211 BC) with the Aetolian League and Attalus I of Pergamon, against Philip V of Macedon, contemporaneously with the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) against Carthage. The ...
. Nothing else that could be described as a true telegraph existed until the 17th century. Possibly the first alphabetic
telegraph code A telegraph code is one of the character encodings used to transmit information by telegraphy. Morse code is the best-known such code. ''Telegraphy'' usually refers to the electrical telegraph, but telegraph systems using the optical telegraph w ...
in the modern era is due to
Franz Kessler Franz Kessler (c. 1580–1650) was a portrait painter, scholar, inventor and alchemist living in the Holy Roman Empire during the 16th and 17th centuries. Writing He wrote a number of books and pamphlets: a book on stoves, on making sundials ...
who published his work in 1616. Kessler used a lamp placed inside a barrel with a moveable shutter operated by the signaller. The signals were observed at a distance with the newly invented telescope.


Drum telegraph

In several places around the world, a system of passing messages from village to village using drum beats was used, particularly highly developed in Africa. At the time Europeans discovered "talking drums", the speed of message transmission was faster than any existing European system using optical telegraphs. The African drum system was not alphabetical. Rather, the drum beats followed the tones of the language. This made messages highly ambiguous and context was important for their correct interpretation.


Optical telegraph

An optical telegraph is a telegraph consisting of a line of stations in towers or natural high points which signal to each other by means of shutters or paddles. Signalling by means of indicator pointers was called ''semaphore''. Early proposals for an optical telegraph system were made to the
Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
by Robert Hooke in 1684 and were first implemented on an experimental level by Sir
Richard Lovell Edgeworth Richard Lovell Edgeworth (31 May 1744 – 13 June 1817) was an Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor. Biography Edgeworth was born in Pierrepont Street, Bath, England, son of Richard Edgeworth senior, and great-grandson of Sir Sal ...
in 1767. The first successful optical telegraph network was invented by Claude Chappe and operated in France from 1793. The two most extensive systems were Chappe's in France, with branches into neighbouring countries, and the system of
Abraham Niclas Edelcrantz Abraham Niclas (Clewberg) Edelcrantz (28 July 1754 – 15 March 1821) was a Finnish born Swedish poet and inventor. He was a member of the Swedish Academy, chair 2, from 1786 to 1821. Edelcrantz was the librarian at The Royal Academy of T ...
in Sweden.Gerard J. Holzmann; Björn Pehrson, ''The Early History of Data Networks'', IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995 . During 1790–1795, at the height of the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
, France needed a swift and reliable communication system to thwart the war efforts of its enemies. In 1790, the Chappe brothers set about devising a system of communication that would allow the central government to receive intelligence and to transmit orders in the shortest possible time. On 2 March 1791, at 11 am, they sent the message "si vous réussissez, vous serez bientôt couverts de gloire" (If you succeed, you will soon bask in glory) between Brulon and Parce, a distance of . The first means used a combination of black and white panels, clocks, telescopes, and codebooks to send their message. In 1792, Claude was appointed ''Ingénieur-Télégraphiste'' and charged with establishing a line of stations between Paris and
Lille Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the N ...
, a distance of . It was used to carry dispatches for the war between France and Austria. In 1794, it brought news of a French capture of
Condé-sur-l'Escaut Condé-sur-l'Escaut (, literally ''Condé on the Escaut''; pcd, Condé-su-l'Escaut) is a commune of the Nord department in northern France. It lies on the border with Belgium. The population as of 1999 was 10,527. Residents of the area are kno ...
from the Austrians less than an hour after it occurred. A decision to replace the system with an electric telegraph was made in 1846, but it took a decade before it was fully taken out of service. The fall of Sebastopol was reported by Chappe telegraph in 1855. The Prussian system was put into effect in the 1830s. However, they were highly dependent on good weather and daylight to work and even then could accommodate only about two words per minute. The last commercial semaphore link ceased operation in Sweden in 1880. As of 1895, France still operated coastal commercial semaphore telegraph stations, for ship-to-shore communication.


Electrical telegraph

The early ideas for an electric telegraph included in 1753 using
electrostatic Electrostatics is a branch of physics that studies electric charges at rest ( static electricity). Since classical times, it has been known that some materials, such as amber, attract lightweight particles after rubbing. The Greek word for amb ...
deflections of
pith Pith, or medulla, is a tissue in the stems of vascular plants. Pith is composed of soft, spongy parenchyma cells, which in some cases can store starch. In eudicotyledons, pith is located in the center of the stem. In monocotyledons, it ext ...
balls, proposals for
electrochemical Electrochemistry is the branch of physical chemistry concerned with the relationship between electrical potential difference, as a measurable and quantitative phenomenon, and identifiable chemical change, with the potential difference as an outc ...
bubbles in acid by Campillo in 1804 and von Sömmering in 1809. The first experimental system over a substantial distance was by Ronalds in 1816 using an
electrostatic generator An electrostatic generator, or electrostatic machine, is an electrical generator that produces ''static electricity'', or electricity at high voltage and low continuous current. The knowledge of static electricity dates back to the earliest ci ...
. Ronalds offered his invention to the British Admiralty, but it was rejected as unnecessary, the existing optical telegraph connecting the Admiralty in London to their main fleet base in
Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth is the most dens ...
being deemed adequate for their purposes. As late as 1844, after the electrical telegraph had come into use, the Admiralty's optical telegraph was still used, although it was accepted that poor weather ruled it out on many days of the year. France had an extensive optical telegraph dating from Napoleonic times and was even slower to take up electrical systems. Eventually, electrostatic telegraphs were abandoned in favour of
electromagnet An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an electric current. Electromagnets usually consist of wire wound into a coil. A current through the wire creates a magnetic field which is concentrated in ...
ic systems. An early experimental system (
Schilling Schilling may refer to: * Schilling (unit), an historical unit of measurement * Schilling (coin), the historical European coin * Austrian schilling, the former currency of Austria * A. Schilling & Company, an historical West Coast spice firm acquir ...
, 1832) led to a proposal to establish a telegraph between St Petersburg and
Kronstadt Kronstadt (russian: Кроншта́дт, Kronshtadt ), also spelled Kronshtadt, Cronstadt or Kronštádt (from german: link=no, Krone for " crown" and ''Stadt'' for "city") is a Russian port city in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city ...
, but it was never completed. The first operative electric telegraph (
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 ...
and Weber, 1833) connected
Göttingen Observatory Göttingen Observatory (''Universitätssternwarte Göttingen'' (Göttingen University Observatory) or ''königliche Sternwarte Göttingen'' (Royal Observatory Göttingen)) is a German astronomical observatory located in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Ge ...
to the Institute of Physics about 1 km away during experimental investigations of the geomagnetic field. The first commercial telegraph was by
Cooke Cooke is a surname derived from the occupation of cook. Notable people with the surname include: * Alexander Cooke (died 1614), English actor * Alfred Tyrone Cooke, of the Indo-Pakistani wars * Alistair Cooke KBE (1908–2004), British-American j ...
and Wheatstone following their English patent of 10 June 1837. It was demonstrated on the
London and Birmingham Railway The London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom, in operation from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR). The railway line which the company opened in 1838, betw ...
in July of the same year. In July 1839, a five-needle, five-wire system was installed to provide signalling over a record distance of 21 km on a section of the Great Western Railway between
London Paddington station Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a Central London railway terminus and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great W ...
and West Drayton.Anton A. Huurdeman, ''The Worldwide History of Telecommunications'' (2003) pp. 67–69 However, in trying to get railway companies to take up his telegraph more widely for
railway signalling Railway signalling (), also called railroad signaling (), is a system used to control the movement of railway traffic. Trains move on fixed rails, making them uniquely susceptible to collision. This susceptibility is exacerbated by the enormo ...
, Cooke was rejected several times in favour of the more familiar, but shorter range, steam-powered pneumatic signalling. Even when his telegraph was taken up, it was considered experimental and the company backed out of a plan to finance extending the telegraph line out to Slough. However, this led to a breakthrough for the electric telegraph, as up to this point the Great Western had insisted on exclusive use and refused Cooke permission to open public telegraph offices. Cooke extended the line at his own expense and agreed that the railway could have free use of it in exchange for the right to open it up to the public. Most of the early electrical systems required multiple wires (Ronalds' system was an exception), but the system developed in the United States by
Morse Morse may refer to: People * Morse (surname) * Morse Goodman (1917-1993), Anglican Bishop of Calgary, Canada * Morse Robb (1902–1992), Canadian inventor and entrepreneur Geography Antarctica * Cape Morse, Wilkes Land * Mount Morse, Churchi ...
and
Vail Vail is a home rule municipality in Eagle County, Colorado, United States. The population of the town was 4,835 in 2020. Home to Vail Ski Resort, the largest ski mountain in Colorado, the town is known for its hotels, dining, and for the numer ...
was a single-wire system. This was the system that first used the soon-to-become-ubiquitous Morse code. By 1844, the Morse system connected Baltimore to Washington, and by 1861 the west coast of the continent was connected to the east coast. The
Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph The Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph was an early electrical telegraph system dating from the 1830s invented by English inventor William Fothergill Cooke and English scientist Charles Wheatstone. It was a form of needle telegraph, and the first te ...
, in a series of improvements, also ended up with a one-wire system, but still using their own code and needle displays. The electric telegraph quickly became a means of more general communication. The Morse system was officially adopted as the standard for continental European telegraphy in 1851 with a revised code, which later became the basis of International Morse Code.Lewis Coe, ''The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and Its Predecessors in the United States'', McFarland, p. 69, 2003 . However, Great Britain and the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...
continued to use the Cooke and Wheatstone system, in some places as late as the 1930s. Likewise, the United States continued to use
American Morse code American Morse Code — also known as Railroad Morse—is the latter-day name for the original version of the Morse Code developed in the mid-1840s, by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail for their electric telegraph. The "American" qualifier was added ...
internally, requiring translation operators skilled in both codes for international messages.


Railway telegraphy

Railway signal telegraphy was developed in Britain from the 1840s onward. It was used to manage railway traffic and to prevent accidents as part of the railway signalling system. On 12 June 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone were awarded a patent for an electric telegraph. This was demonstrated between Euston railway station—where Wheatstone was located—and the engine house at Camden Town—where Cooke was stationed, together with
Robert Stephenson Robert Stephenson FRS HFRSE FRSA DCL (16 October 1803 – 12 October 1859) was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of his father ...
, the
London and Birmingham Railway The London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom, in operation from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR). The railway line which the company opened in 1838, betw ...
line's chief engineer. The messages were for the operation of the rope-haulage system for pulling trains up the 1 in 77 bank. The world's first permanent railway telegraph was completed in July 1839 between London Paddington and West Drayton on the Great Western Railway with an electric telegraph using a four-needle system. The concept of a signalling "block" system was proposed by Cooke in 1842. Railway signal telegraphy did not change in essence from Cooke's initial concept for more than a century. In this system each line of railway was divided into sections or blocks of varying length. Entry to and exit from the block was to be authorised by electric telegraph and signalled by the line-side semaphore signals, so that only a single train could occupy the rails. In Cooke's original system, a single-needle telegraph was adapted to indicate just two messages: "Line Clear" and "Line Blocked". The
signaller A signaller, signalman, colloquially referred to as a radioman or signaleer in the armed forces is a specialist soldier, sailor or airman responsible for military communications. Signallers, a.k.a. Combat Signallers or signalmen or women, are ...
would adjust his line-side signals accordingly. As first implemented in 1844 each station had as many needles as there were stations on the line, giving a complete picture of the traffic. As lines expanded, a sequence of pairs of single-needle instruments were adopted, one pair for each block in each direction.


Wigwag

Wigwag is a form of flag signalling using a single flag. Unlike most forms of flag signalling, which are used over relatively short distances, wigwag is designed to maximise the distance covered—up to in some cases. Wigwag achieved this by using a large flag—a single flag can be held with both hands unlike flag semaphore which has a flag in each hand—and using motions rather than positions as its symbols since motions are more easily seen. It was invented by US Army surgeon
Albert J. Myer Albert James Myer (September 20, 1828 – August 24, 1880) was a surgeon and United States Army general. He is known as the father of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, as its first chief signal officer just prior to the American Civil War, the inventor ...
in the 1850s who later became the first head of the Signal Corps. Wigwag was used extensively during the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
where it filled a gap left by the electrical telegraph. Although the electrical telegraph had been in use for more than a decade, the network did not yet reach everywhere and portable, ruggedized equipment suitable for military use was not immediately available. Permanent or semi-permanent stations were established during the war, some of them towers of enormous height and the system was extensive enough to be described as a communications network.


Heliograph

A
heliograph A heliograph () is a semaphore system that signals by flashes of sunlight (generally using Morse code) reflected by a mirror. The flashes are produced by momentarily pivoting the mirror, or by interrupting the beam with a shutter. The heliograp ...
is a telegraph that transmits messages by flashing sunlight with a mirror, usually using Morse code. The idea for a telegraph of this type was first proposed as a modification of surveying equipment (
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 ...
, 1821). Various uses of mirrors were made for communication in the following years, mostly for military purposes, but the first device to become widely used was a heliograph with a moveable mirror ( Mance, 1869). The system was used by the French during the 1870–71 siege of Paris, with night-time signalling using kerosene lamps as the source of light. An improved version (Begbie, 1870) was used by British military in many colonial wars, including the
Anglo-Zulu War The Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom. Following the passing of the British North America Act of 1867 forming a federation in Canada, Lord Carnarvon thought that a similar political effort, cou ...
(1879). At some point, a morse key was added to the apparatus to give the operator the same degree of control as in the electric telegraph.David L. Woods, "Heliograph and mirrors", pp. 208–211 in, Christopher H. Sterling (ed), ''Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century'', ABC-CLIO, 2008 . Another type of heliograph was the heliostat or heliotrope fitted with a Colomb shutter. The heliostat was essentially a surveying instrument with a fixed mirror and so could not transmit a code by itself. The term ''heliostat'' is sometimes used as a synonym for ''heliograph'' because of this origin. The Colomb shutter (
Bolton Bolton (, locally ) is a large town in Greater Manchester in North West England, formerly a part of Lancashire. A former mill town, Bolton has been a production centre for textiles since Flemish weavers settled in the area in the 14th ...
and Colomb, 1862) was originally invented to enable the transmission of morse code by
signal lamp Signal lamp training during World War II A signal lamp (sometimes called an Aldis lamp or a Morse lamp) is a semaphore system using a visual signaling device for optical communication, typically using Morse code. The idea of flashing dots and da ...
between
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
ships at sea. The heliograph was heavily used by
Nelson A. Miles Nelson Appleton Miles (August 8, 1839 – May 15, 1925) was an American military general who served in the American Civil War, the American Indian Wars, and the Spanish–American War. From 1895 to 1903, Miles served as the last Commanding Gen ...
in
Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
and
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ...
after he took over command (1886) of the fight against Geronimo and other Apache bands in the Apache Wars. Miles had previously set up the first heliograph line in the US between
Fort Keogh Fort Keogh is a former United States Army post located at the western edge of modern Miles City, in the U.S. state of Montana. It is situated on the south bank of the Yellowstone River, at the mouth of the Tongue River. Colonel Nelson A. Miles, ...
and Fort Custer in
Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...
. He used the heliograph to fill in vast, thinly populated areas that were not covered by the electric telegraph. Twenty-six stations covered an area . In a test of the system, a message was relayed in four hours. Miles' enemies used smoke signals and flashes of sunlight from metal, but lacked a sophisticated telegraph code. The heliograph was ideal for use in the American Southwest due to its clear air and mountainous terrain on which stations could be located. It was found necessary to lengthen the morse dash (which is much shorter in American Morse code than in the modern International Morse code) to aid differentiating from the morse dot. Use of the heliograph declined from 1915 onwards, but remained in service in Britain and
British Commonwealth The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Co ...
countries for some time. Australian forces used the heliograph as late as 1942 in the Western Desert Campaign of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. Some form of heliograph was used by the mujahideen in the
Soviet–Afghan War The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It saw extensive fighting between the Soviet Union and the Afghan mujahideen (alongside smaller groups of anti-Sovie ...
(1979–1989).


Teleprinter

A teleprinter is a telegraph machine that can send messages from a typewriter-like keyboard and print incoming messages in readable text with no need for the operators to be trained in the telegraph code used on the line. It developed from various earlier printing telegraphs and resulted in improved transmission speeds. The
Morse telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...
(1837) was originally conceived as a system marking indentations on paper tape. A chemical telegraph making blue marks improved the speed of recording (
Bain Bain may refer to: People * Bain (surname), origin and list of people with the surname * Bain of Tulloch, Scottish family * Bain Stewart, Australian film producer, husband of Leah Purcell * Saint Bain (died c. 711 AD), Bishop of Thérouanne, Ab ...
, 1846), but was delayed by a patent challenge from Morse. The first true printing telegraph (that is printing in plain text) used a spinning wheel of
types Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a set of possible values and a set of allo ...
in the manner of a
daisy wheel printer Daisy wheel printing is an impact printing technology invented in 1970 by Andrew Gabor at Diablo Data Systems. It uses interchangeable pre-formed type elements, each with typically 96 glyphs, to generate high-quality output comparable to pr ...
( House, 1846, improved by
Hughes Hughes may refer to: People * Hughes (surname) * Hughes (given name) Places Antarctica * Hughes Range (Antarctica), Ross Dependency * Mount Hughes, Oates Land * Hughes Basin, Oates Land * Hughes Bay, Graham Land * Hughes Bluff, Victoria La ...
, 1855). The system was adopted by
Western Union The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company cha ...
. Early teleprinters used the
Baudot code The Baudot code is an early character encoding for telegraphy invented by Émile Baudot in the 1870s. It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2), the most common teleprinter code in use until the advent of ASCII ...
, a five-bit sequential binary code. This was a telegraph code developed for use on the French telegraph using a five-key keyboard ( Baudot, 1874). Teleprinters generated the same code from a full alphanumeric keyboard. A feature of the Baudot code, and subsequent telegraph codes, was that, unlike Morse code, every character has a code of the same length making it more machine friendly. The Baudot code was used on the earliest
ticker tape Ticker tape was the earliest electrical dedicated financial communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use from around 1870 through 1970. It consisted of a paper strip that ran through a machine called ...
machines ( Calahan, 1867), a system for mass distributing stock price information.Richard E. Smith, ''Elementary Information Security'', p. 433, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2015 .


Automated punched-tape transmission

In a punched-tape system, the message is first typed onto punched tape using the code of the telegraph system—Morse code for instance. It is then, either immediately or at some later time, run through a transmission machine which sends the message to the telegraph network. Multiple messages can be sequentially recorded on the same run of tape. The advantage of doing this is that messages can be sent at a steady, fast rate making maximum use of the available telegraph lines. The economic advantage of doing this is greatest on long, busy routes where the cost of the extra step of preparing the tape is outweighed by the cost of providing more telegraph lines. The first machine to use punched tape was Bain's teleprinter (Bain, 1843), but the system saw only limited use. Later versions of Bain's system achieved speeds up to 1000 words per minute, far faster than a human operator could achieve. The first widely used system (Wheatstone, 1858) was first put into service with the British General Post Office in 1867. A novel feature of the Wheatstone system was the use of
bipolar encoding In telecommunication, bipolar encoding is a type of return-to-zero (RZ) line code, where two nonzero values are used, so that the three values are +, −, and zero. Such a signal is called a duobinary signal. Standard bipolar encodings are designed ...
. That is, both positive and negative polarity voltages were used. Bipolar encoding has several advantages, one of which is that it permits duplex communication. The Wheatstone tape reader was capable of a speed of 400 words per minute.Tom Standage, ''The Victorian Internet'', Berkley, 1999 .


Oceanic telegraph cables

A worldwide communication network meant that telegraph cables would have to be laid across oceans. On land cables could be run uninsulated suspended from poles. Underwater, a good insulator that was both flexible and capable of resisting the ingress of seawater was required. A solution presented itself with
gutta-percha Gutta-percha is a tree of the genus ''Palaquium'' in the family Sapotaceae. The name also refers to the rigid, naturally biologically inert, resilient, electrically nonconductive, thermoplastic latex derived from the tree, particularly from ...
, a natural rubber from the ''
Palaquium gutta ''Palaquium gutta'' is a tree in the family Sapotaceae. The specific epithet ' is from the Malay word ''getah'' meaning "sap or latex". It is known in Indonesia as ''karet oblong''. Description ''Palaquium gutta'' grows up to tall. The bark i ...
'' tree, after
William Montgomerie William Montgomerie (1797–1856) was a Scottish military doctor with the East India Company, and later head of the medical department at Singapore. He is best known for promoting the use of gutta-percha in Europe. This material was an import ...
sent samples to London from Singapore in 1843. The new material was tested by
Michael Faraday Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...
and in 1845 Wheatstone suggested that it should be used on the cable planned between Dover and Calais by
John Watkins Brett John Watkins Brett (1805–1863) was an English telegraph engineer. Life Brett was the son of a cabinetmaker, William Brett of Bristol, and was born in that city in 1805. Brett is known as the founder of submarine telegraphy. He formed the Sub ...
. The idea was proved viable when the South Eastern Railway company successfully tested a gutta-percha insulated cable with telegraph messages to a ship off the coast of Folkestone. The cable to France was laid in 1850 but was almost immediately severed by a French fishing vessel.Solymar, Laszlo.
The Effect of the Telegraph on Law and Order, War, Diplomacy, and Power Politics
'' in ''Interdisciplinary Science Reviews'', 2000. Accessed 1 August 2014.
It was relaid the next year and connections to Ireland and the
Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...
soon followed. Getting a cable across the Atlantic Ocean proved much more difficult. The
Atlantic Telegraph Company The Atlantic Telegraph Company was a company formed on 6 November 1856 to undertake and exploit a commercial telegraph cable across the Atlantic ocean, the first such telecommunications link. History Cyrus Field, American businessman and finan ...
, formed in
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
in 1856, had several failed attempts. A cable laid in 1858 worked poorly for a few days (sometimes taking all day to send a message despite the use of the highly sensitive
mirror galvanometer A mirror galvanometer is an ammeter that indicates it has sensed an electric current by deflecting a light beam with a mirror. The beam of light projected on a scale acts as a long massless pointer. In 1826, Johann Christian Poggendorff devel ...
developed by William Thomson (the future
Lord Kelvin William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 182417 December 1907) was a British mathematician, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for 53 years, he did important ...
) before being destroyed by applying too high a voltage. Its failure and slow speed of transmission prompted Thomson and
Oliver Heaviside Oliver Heaviside FRS (; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was an English self-taught mathematician and physicist who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed ...
to find better mathematical descriptions of long
transmission line In electrical engineering, a transmission line is a specialized cable or other structure designed to conduct electromagnetic waves in a contained manner. The term applies when the conductors are long enough that the wave nature of the transmi ...
s. The company finally succeeded in 1866 with an improved cable laid by SS ''Great Eastern'', the largest ship of its day, designed by
Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a British civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history," "one of the 19th-century engineering giants," and "on ...
. An overland telegraph from Britain to India was first connected in 1866 but was unreliable so a submarine telegraph cable was connected in 1870. Several telegraph companies were combined to form the ''Eastern Telegraph Company'' in 1872. Australia was first linked to the rest of the world in October 1872 by a submarine telegraph cable at Darwin. From the 1850s until well into the 20th century, British submarine cable systems dominated the world system. This was set out as a formal strategic goal, which became known as the
All Red Line The All Red Line was a system of electrical telegraphs that linked much of the British Empire. It was inaugurated on 31 October 1902. The informal name derives from the common practice of colouring the territory of the British Empire red or ...
. In 1896, there were thirty cable-laying ships in the world and twenty-four of them were owned by British companies. In 1892, British companies owned and operated two-thirds of the world's cables and by 1923, their share was still 42.7 percent. During
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, Britain's telegraph communications were almost completely uninterrupted while it was able to quickly cut Germany's cables worldwide.


Facsimile

In 1843, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain invented a device that could be considered the first
facsimile machine Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...
. He called his invention a "recording telegraph". Bain's telegraph was able to transmit images by electrical wires.
Frederick Bakewell Frederick Collier Bakewell (29 September 1800 – 26 September 1869) was an English physicist who improved on the concept of the facsimile machine introduced by Alexander Bain in 1842 and demonstrated a working laboratory version at the 1 ...
made several improvements on Bain's design and demonstrated a telefax machine. In 1855, an Italian abbot,
Giovanni Caselli Giovanni Caselli (8 June 1815 – 25 April 1891) was an Italian priest, inventor, and physicist. He studied electricity and magnetism as a child which led to his invention of the pantelegraph (also known as the universal telegraph or all-purpose ...
, also created an electric telegraph that could transmit images. Caselli called his invention "
Pantelegraph The pantelegraph (Italian: ''pantelegrafo''; French: ''pantélégraphe'') was an early form of facsimile machine transmitting over normal telegraph lines developed by Giovanni Caselli, used commercially in the 1860s, that was the first such de ...
". Pantelegraph was successfully tested and approved for a telegraph line between
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
and
Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, third-largest city and Urban area (France), second-largest metropolitan area of F ...
. In 1881, English inventor
Shelford Bidwell Shelford Bidwell FRS (6 March 1848 – 18 December 1909) was an English physicist and inventor. He is best known for his work with "telephotography", a precursor to the modern fax machine. Private life He was born in Thetford, Norfolk the elde ...
constructed the ''scanning phototelegraph'' that was the first telefax machine to scan any two-dimensional original, not requiring manual plotting or drawing. Around 1900, German physicist Arthur Korn invented the '' Bildtelegraph'' widespread in continental Europe especially since a widely noticed transmission of a wanted-person photograph from Paris to London in 1908 used until the wider distribution of the radiofax. Its main competitors were the ''Bélinographe'' by
Édouard Belin Édouard Belin (5 March 1876 – 4 March 1963) was a French photographer and inventor. In 1907 Belin invented a phototelegraphic apparatus called the Bélinographe (télestéréographe)—a system for receiving photographs over telephone ...
first, then since the 1930s, the ''
Hellschreiber The Hellschreiber, Feldhellschreiber or Typenbildfeldfernschreiber (also Hell-Schreiber named after its inventor Rudolf Hell) is a facsimile-based teleprinter invented by Rudolf Hell. Compared to contemporary teleprinters that were based on ty ...
'', invented in 1929 by German inventor
Rudolf Hell Rudolf Hell (19 December 1901 – 11 March 2002) was a German inventor and engineer. Career Hell was born in Eggmühl. From 1919 to 1923, he studied electrical engineering in Munich. He worked there from 1923 to 1929 as assistant of Prof. ...
, a pioneer in mechanical image scanning and transmission.


Wireless telegraphy

The late 1880s through to the 1890s saw the discovery and then development of a newly understood phenomenon into a form of
wireless telegraphy Wireless telegraphy or radiotelegraphy is transmission of text messages by radio waves, analogous to electrical telegraphy using cables. Before about 1910, the term ''wireless telegraphy'' was also used for other experimental technologies for ...
, called ''Hertzian wave'' wireless telegraphy, radiotelegraphy, or (later) simply "
radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...
". Between 1886 and 1888, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz published the results of his experiments where he was able to transmit electromagnetic waves (radio waves) through the air, proving
James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and li ...
's 1873 theory of
electromagnetic radiation In physics, electromagnetic radiation (EMR) consists of waves of the electromagnetic (EM) field, which propagate through space and carry momentum and electromagnetic radiant energy. It includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared, (visible) li ...
. Many scientists and inventors experimented with this new phenomenon but the consensus was that these new waves (similar to light) would be just as short range as light, and, therefore, useless for long range communication. At the end of 1894, the young Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi began working on the idea of building a commercial wireless telegraphy system based on the use of Hertzian waves (radio waves), a line of inquiry that he noted other inventors did not seem to be pursuing. Building on the ideas of previous scientists and inventors Marconi re-engineered their apparatus by trial and error attempting to build a radio-based wireless telegraphic system that would function the same as wired telegraphy. He would work on the system through 1895 in his lab and then in field tests making improvements to extend its range. After many breakthroughs, including applying the wired telegraphy concept of grounding the transmitter and receiver, Marconi was able, by early 1896, to transmit radio far beyond the short ranges that had been predicted. Having failed to interest the Italian government, the 22-year-old inventor brought his telegraphy system to Britain in 1896 and met
William Preece Sir William Henry Preece (15 February 1834 – 6 November 1913) was a Welsh electrical engineer and inventor. Preece relied on experiments and physical reasoning in his life's work. Upon his retirement from the Post Office in 1899, Preece was m ...
, a Welshman, who was a major figure in the field and Chief Engineer of the General Post Office. A series of demonstrations for the British government followed—by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about across Salisbury Plain. On 13 May 1897, Marconi, assisted by George Kemp, a
Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...
Post Office engineer, transmitted the first wireless signals over water to
Lavernock Lavernock ( cy, Larnog) is a hamlet in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, lying on the coast south of Cardiff between Penarth and Sully, and overlooking the Bristol Channel. Marconi and the first radio messages across open sea Following over ...
(near Penarth in Wales) from
Flat Holm Flat Holm ( cy, Ynys Echni) is a Welsh island lying in the Bristol Channel approximately from Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan. It includes the most southerly point of Wales. The island has a long history of occupation, dating at lea ...
. His star rising, he was soon sending signals across the
English Channel The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...
(1899), from shore to ship (1899) and finally across the Atlantic (1901). A study of these demonstrations of radio, with scientists trying to work out how a phenomenon predicted to have a short range could transmit "over the horizon", led to the discovery of a radio reflecting layer in the Earth's atmosphere in 1902, later called the ionosphere. Radiotelegraphy proved effective for rescue work in sea
disaster A disaster is a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources ...
s by enabling effective communication between ships and from ship to shore. In 1904, Marconi began the first commercial service to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. A regular transatlantic radio-telegraph service was finally begun on 17 October 1907. Notably, Marconi's apparatus was used to help rescue efforts after the sinking of . Britain's postmaster-general summed up, referring to the ''Titanic'' disaster, "Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi...and his marvellous invention."


Telegram services

A telegram service is a company or public entity that delivers telegraphed messages directly to the recipient. Telegram services were not inaugurated until
electric telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...
y became available. Earlier optical systems were largely limited to official government and military purposes. Historically, telegrams were sent between a network of interconnected telegraph offices. A person visiting a local telegraph office paid by the word to have a message telegraphed to another office and delivered to the addressee on a paper form. Messages sent by telegraph could be delivered by
telegram messenger In many English-speaking countries, a telegram messenger, more often known as a telegram delivery boy, telegraph boy or telegram boy was a young man employed to deliver telegrams, usually on bicycle. In the United Kingdom, they were employed by th ...
faster than mail, and even in the telephone age, the telegram remained popular for social and business correspondence. At their peak in 1929, an estimated 200 million telegrams were sent. In 1919, the Central Bureau for Registered Addresses was established in the
financial district A financial district is usually a central area in a city where financial services firms such as banks, insurance companies and other related finance corporations have their head offices. In major cities, financial districts are often home to s ...
of
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. The bureau was created to ease the growing problem of messages being delivered to the wrong recipients. To combat this issue, the bureau offered telegraph customers the option to register unique code names for their telegraph addresses. Customers were charged $2.50 per year per code. By 1934, 28,000 codes had been registered. Telegram services still operate in much of the world (see worldwide use of telegrams by country), but e-mail and
text messaging Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible comput ...
have rendered telegrams obsolete in many countries, and the number of telegrams sent annually has been declining rapidly since the 1980s. Where telegram services still exist, the transmission method between offices is no longer by telegraph, but by
telex The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electroni ...
or IP link.


Telegram length

As telegrams have been traditionally charged by the word, messages were often abbreviated to pack information into the smallest possible number of words, in what came to be called "
telegram style Telegram style, telegraph style, telegraphic style, or telegraphese is a clipped way of writing which abbreviates words and packs information into the smallest possible number of words or characters. It originated in the telegraph age when telecom ...
". The average length of a telegram in the 1900s in the US was 11.93 words; more than half of the messages were 10 words or fewer. According to another study, the mean length of the telegrams sent in the UK before 1950 was 14.6 words or 78.8 characters. For German telegrams, the mean length is 11.5 words or 72.4 characters. At the end of the 19th century, the average length of a German telegram was calculated as 14.2 words.


Telex

Telex The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electroni ...
(TELegraph EXchange) was a public switched network of teleprinters. It used rotary-telephone-style
pulse dialling Pulse dialing is a signaling technology in telecommunications in which a direct current local loop circuit is interrupted according to a defined coding system for each signal transmitted, usually a digit. This lends the method the often used name ...
for automatic routing through the network. It initially used the
Baudot code The Baudot code is an early character encoding for telegraphy invented by Émile Baudot in the 1870s. It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2), the most common teleprinter code in use until the advent of ASCII ...
for messages. Telex development began in Germany in 1926, becoming an operational service in 1933 run by the Reichspost (Reich postal service). It had a speed of 50 baud—approximately 66 words per minute. Up to 25 telex channels could share a single long-distance telephone channel by using
voice frequency telegraphy Analogue filters are a basic building block of signal processing much used in electronics. Amongst their many applications are the separation of an audio signal before application to bass, mid-range, and tweeter loudspeakers; the combining and ...
multiplexing, making telex the least expensive method of reliable long-distance communication. Telex was introduced into Canada in July 1957, and the United States in 1958. A new code,
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
, was introduced in 1963 by the American Standards Association. ASCII was a 7-bit code and could thus support a larger number of characters than Baudot. In particular, ASCII supported upper and lower case whereas Baudot was upper case only.


Decline

Telegraph use began to permanently decline around 1920.Jeffrey L. Kieve, ''The Electric Telegraph: A Social and Economic History'', David and Charles, 1973 The decline began with the growth of the use of the
telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
. Ironically, the invention of the telephone grew out of the development of the
harmonic telegraph Acoustic telegraphy (also known as harmonic telegraphy) was a name for various methods of multiplexing (transmitting more than one) telegraph messages simultaneously over a single telegraph wire by using different audio frequencies or channels fo ...
, a device which was supposed to increase the efficiency of telegraph transmission and improve the profits of telegraph companies. Western Union gave up its patent battle with Alexander Graham Bell because it believed the telephone was not a threat to its telegraph business. The Bell Telephone Company was formed in 1877 and had 230 subscribers which grew to 30,000 by 1880. By 1886 there were a quarter of a million phones worldwide, and nearly 2 million by 1900. The decline was briefly postponed by the rise of special occasion congratulatory telegrams. Traffic continued to grow between 1867 and 1893 despite the introduction of the telephone in this period, but by 1900 the telegraph was definitely in decline. There was a brief resurgence in telegraphy during
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
but the decline continued as the world entered the Great Depression years of the 1930s. After the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
new technology improved communication in the telegraph industry. Telegraph lines continued to be an important means of distributing news feeds from
news agencies A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and radio and television broadcasters. A news agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire, ...
by teleprinter machine until the rise of the internet in the 1990s. For Western Union, one service remained highly profitable—the
wire transfer Wire transfer, bank transfer, or credit transfer, is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or entity to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account, or through a transfer of cash at a cash ...
of money. This service kept Western Union in business long after the telegraph had ceased to be important. In the modern era, the telegraph that began in 1837 has been gradually replaced by digital data transmission based on computer
information system An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...
s.


Social implications

Optical telegraph lines were installed by governments, often for a military purpose, and reserved for official use only. In many countries, this situation continued after the introduction of the electric telegraph. Starting in Germany and the UK, electric telegraph lines were installed by railway companies. Railway use quickly led to private telegraph companies in the UK and the US offering a telegraph service to the public using telegraph along railway lines. The availability of this new form of communication brought on widespread social and economic changes. The electric telegraph freed communication from the time constraints of postal mail and revolutionized the global economy and society.Economic History Encyclopedia (2010) "History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry", By the end of the 19th century, the telegraph was becoming an increasingly common medium of communication for ordinary people. The telegraph isolated the message (information) from the physical movement of objects or the process.Carey, James (1989). ''Communication as Culture'', Routledge, New York and London, p. 210 There was some fear of the new technology. According to author
Allan J. Kimmel Allan may refer to: People * Allan (name), a given name and surname, including list of people and characters with this name * Allan (footballer, born 1984) (Allan Barreto da Silva), Brazilian football striker * Allan (footballer, born 1989) ...
, some people "feared that the telegraph would erode the quality of public discourse through the transmission of irrelevant, context-free information." Henry David Thoreau thought of the Transatlantic cable "...perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough." Kimmel says these fears anticipate many of the characteristics of the modern internet age. Initially, the telegraph was expensive, but it had an enormous effect on three industries: finance, newspapers, and railways. Telegraphy facilitated the growth of organizations "in the railroads, consolidated financial and commodity markets, and reduced information costs within and between firms". In the US, there were 200 to 300 stock exchanges before the telegraph, but most of these were unnecessary and unprofitable once the telegraph made financial transactions at a distance easy and drove down transaction costs. This immense growth in the business sectors influenced society to embrace the use of telegrams once the cost had fallen. Worldwide telegraphy changed the gathering of information for news reporting. Journalists were using the telegraph for war reporting as early as 1846 when the
Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...
broke out. News agencies were formed, such as the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
, for the purpose of reporting news by telegraph. Messages and information would now travel far and wide, and the telegraph demanded a language "stripped of the local, the regional; and colloquial", to better facilitate a worldwide media language. Media language had to be standardized, which led to the gradual disappearance of different forms of speech and styles of
journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...
and storytelling. The spread of the railways created a need for an accurate standard time to replace local arbitrary standards based on local
noon Noon (or midday) is 12 o'clock in the daytime. It is written as 12 noon, 12:00 m. (for meridiem, literally 12:00 noon), 12 p.m. (for post meridiem, literally "after noon"), 12 pm, or 12:00 (using a 24-hour clock) or 1200 ( military time). Sola ...
. The means of achieving this synchronisation was the telegraph. This emphasis on precise time has led to major societal changes such as the concept of the
time value of money The time value of money is the widely accepted conjecture that there is greater benefit to receiving a sum of money now rather than an identical sum later. It may be seen as an implication of the later-developed concept of time preference. The ...
. During the telegraph era there was widespread employment of
women in telegraphy Women in telegraphy have been evident since the 1840s. The introduction of practical systems of telegraphy in the 1840s led to the creation of a new occupational category, the telegrapher, telegraphist or telegraph operator. Duties of the telegr ...
. The shortage of men to work as telegraph operators in the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
opened up the opportunity for women of a well-paid skilled job. In the UK, there was widespread employment of women as telegraph operators even earlier – from the 1850s by all the major companies. The attraction of women for the telegraph companies was that they could pay them less than men. Nevertheless, the jobs were popular with women for the same reason as in the US; most other work available for women was very poorly paid. The economic impact of the telegraph was not much studied by economic historians until parallels started to be drawn with the rise of the internet. In fact, the electric telegraph was as important as the invention of printing in this respect. According to economist Ronnie J. Phillips, the reason for this may be that
institutional economists Institutional economics focuses on understanding the role of the evolutionary process and the role of institutions in shaping economic behavior. Its original focus lay in Thorstein Veblen's instinct-oriented dichotomy between technology on the on ...
paid more attention to advances that required greater capital investment. The investment required to build railways, for instance, is orders of magnitude greater than that for the telegraph.Ronnie J. Phillips
"Digital technology and institutional change from the gilded age to modern times: The impact of the telegraph and the internet"
, ''Journal of Economic Issues'', vol. 34, iss. 2, pp. 267–289, June 2000.


Popular culture

The optical telegraph was quickly forgotten once it went out of service. While it was in operation, it was very familiar to the public across Europe. Examples appear in many paintings of the period. Poems include ''Le Telégraphe'', by
Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...
, and the collection ''Telegrafen: Optisk kalender för 1858'' by is dedicated to the telegraph. In novels, the telegraph is a major component in ''
Lucien Leuwen ''Lucien Leuwen'' is the second major novel written by French author Stendhal in 1834, following ''The Red and the Black'' (1830). It remained unfinished due to the political culture of the July Monarchy in the 1830s and Stendhal's fears of losin ...
'' by Stendhal, and it features in '' The Count of Monte Cristo'', by Alexandre Dumas. Joseph Chudy's 1796 opera, ''Der Telegraph oder die Fernschreibmaschine'', was written to publicise Chudy's telegraph (a binary code with five lamps) when it became clear that Chappe's design was being taken up.
Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...
wrote a poem in praise of submarine telegraph cables; "And a new Word runs between: whispering, 'Let us be one!'" Kipling's poem represented a widespread idea in the late nineteenth century that international telegraphy (and new technology in general) would bring peace and mutual understanding to the world.John A. Britton, ''Cables, Crises, and the Press: The Geopolitics of the New Information System in the Americas, 1866–1903'', p. xi, University of New Mexico Press, 2013 . When a submarine telegraph cable first connected America and Britain, the ''Post'' declared;


Newspaper names

Numerous newspapers and news outlets in various countries, such as ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...
'' in Britain, ''The Telegraph'' in India, '' De Telegraaf'' in the Netherlands, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in the US, were given names which include the word "telegraph" due to their having received news by means of electric telegraphy. Some of these names are retained even though different means of news acquisition are now used.


See also

* Casa del Telegrafista, a Colombian museum dedicated to the telegrapher at a train station *
Familygram A familygram is a personal message sent by their families to sailors of the United States Navy or the Royal Navy serving in submarines. Because submarines normally maintain radio silence to avoid detection, personal messages from the 'outside wor ...
*
First transcontinental telegraph The first transcontinental telegraph (completed October 24, 1861) was a line that connected the existing telegraph network in the eastern United States to a small network in California, by means of a link between Omaha, Nebraska and Carson City, ...
*
Globotype The Globotype is a colour display for telecommunications. It was invented and patented by David McCallum (inventor), David McCallum of Stonehouse, Devon, England. The device features very low cost and does not use consumable supplies. It is Royal L ...
* Radiogram *
Telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...


References


Further reading

* Britton, John A. ''Cables, Crises, and the Press: The Geopolitics of the New International Information System in the Americas, 1866–1903''. (University of New Mexico Press, 2013). * Fari, Simone. ''Formative Years of the Telegraph Union'' (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015). * Fari, Simone. ''Victorian Telegraphy Before Nationalization'' (2014). * Gorman, Mel. "Sir William O'Shaughnessy, Lord Dalhousie, and the establishment of the telegraph system in India." ''Technology and Culture'' 12.4 (1971): 581–60
online
. * Hochfelder, David, ''The Telegraph in America, 1832–1920'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). * Huurdeman, Anton A. ''The Worldwide History of Telecommunications'' (John Wiley & Sons, 2003) * John, Richard R. ''Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications'' (Harvard University Press; 2010) 520 pages; the evolution of American telegraph and telephone networks. * Kieve, Jeffrey L. (1973). ''The Electric Telegraph: a Social and Economic History''. David and Charles. . * Lew, B., and Cater, B. "The Telegraph, Co-ordination of Tramp Shipping, and Growth in World Trade, 1870–1910", ''European Review of Economic History'' 10 (2006): 147–73. * Müller, Simone M., and Heidi JS Tworek. "'The telegraph and the bank': on the interdependence of global communications and capitalism, 1866–1914." ''Journal of Global History'' 10#2 (2015): 259–283. * O'Hara, Glen. "New Histories of British Imperial Communication and the 'Networked World' of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries" ''History Compass'' (2010) 8#7pp 609–625, Historiography, * Richardson, Alan J. "The cost of a telegram: Accounting and the evolution of international regulation of the telegraph." ''Accounting History'' 20#4 (2015): 405–429. * Standage, Tom (1998). ''
The Victorian Internet ''The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers'' is a 1998 book by Tom Standage. The book was first published in September 1998 through Walker & Company and discusses the development a ...
''. Berkley Trade. . * Thompson, Robert Luther. ''Wiring a continent: The history of the telegraph industry in the United States, 1832–1866'' (Princeton UP, 1947). * Wenzlhuemer, Roland. "The Development of Telegraphy, 1870–1900: A European Perspective on a World History Challenge." ''History Compass'' 5#5 (2007): 1720–1742. * Wenzlhuemer, Roland. ''Connecting the nineteenth-century world: The telegraph and globalization'' (Cambridge UP, 2013)
online review
* Winseck, Dwayne R., and Robert M. Pike. ''Communication & Empire: Media, Markets & Globalization, 1860–1930'' (2007), 429pp. * ''The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers'', a book about the telegraph


Technology

* * Dargan, J. "The Railway Telegraph", ''Australian Railway Historical Society Bulletin'', March 1985 pp. 49–71 * * Pichler, Franz, ''Magneto-Electric Dial Telegraphs: Contributions of Wheatstone, Stoehrer and Siemens'',
The AWA Review The Antique Wireless Association (AWA) is chartered as a non-profit educational organization in New York State and is an IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation based in Bloomfield, New York. It was originally established in 1952 by Bruce Kelley, Geor ...
vol. 26, (2013). * Ross, Nelson E
HOW TO WRITE TELEGRAMS PROPERLY
The Telegraph Office (1928) * Wheen, Andrew;— ''DOT-DASH TO DOT.COM: How Modern Telecommunications Evolved from the Telegraph to the Internet'' (Springer, 2011) . * Wilson, Geoffrey, ''The Old Telegraphs'', Phillimore & Co Ltd 1976 ; a comprehensive history of the shutter, semaphore and other kinds of visual mechanical telegraphs.


External links

*
Britannica Encyclopedia - Telegraph

The Porthcurno Telegraph Museum
The biggest Telegraph station in the world, now a museum
Distant Writing
The History of the Telegraph Companies in Britain between 1838 and 1868
Western Union Telegraph Company Records, 1820–1995
Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
Early telegraphy and fax engineering, still operable in a German computer museum


''The New York Times'', 6 February 2006
International Facilities of the American Carriers
– an overview of the U.S. international cable network in 1950 *Elizabeth Bruton
Communication Technology
in

{{Authority control Telecommunications