The idea behind the telegraph - sending
electric signals across wires - originated in the early
1700s, and by 1798 a rough system was used in France.
New York University professor Samuel Morse (pictured at
left) began working on his version of the telegraph in
1832; he developed Morse Code (a set of sounds that
corresponded to particular letters of the alphabet), in
1835; and by 1838 he had presented his concept to the
U.S. Congress. He was not the first to think of the
idea - 62 people had claimed to invent the first
electrical telegraph by 1838 - but Morse beat everyone
else to by being the first to get political backing for
his telegraph and a business model for making it
work.
In 1843, Morse built a telegraph
system from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore with the
financial support of Congress. On May 24, 1844, the
first message, “What hath God wrought?” was
sent. The telegraph system progressed slowly, and many
attempts failed to make the system work for the entire
country. Morse slowly continued to spread his invention
and he extended the telegraph line to New York. At the
same time, other companies began taking notice of the
impact of the telegraph and they opened their own
systems in other parts of the country. Western Union
built its first transcontinental telegraph line in
1861.
At first,
telegraph messages were transmitted by trained code
users, but in 1914 a form of automatic transmission was
developed. This made the message transmission much
faster. At the turn of the 20th century, all
long-distance communication depended heavily on the
telegraph.
In 1864, top telegraph company
Western Union operated on 44,000 miles of wire and was
valued at $10 million. Within the next year, its worth
had jumped to $21 million. It is estimated that between
1857 and 1867 the company's value grew by 11,000
percent. In 1866, its network included about 100,000
miles of wire and its capital stock value was in excess
of $40 million.
At the end of the 19th century,
demands for constraints on Western Union's power
resulted in the passage of the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910,
granting the Interstate Commerce Commission regulatory
oversight of telegraph rates. Later, the Communications
Act of 1934 switched regulation of the telegraph
industry to the newly created Federal Communications
Commission. By this time, the radio and telephone had
diminished the impact of the telegraph.
Prior to the
telegraph, communication in the 1830s was about the
same as it had been in the years just after
Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. It
took days, weeks, and even months for messages to be
sent from one location to a far-flung position. After
the telegraph cable was stretched from coast to coast
in the 1850s, a message from London to New York could
be sent in mere minutes, and the world suddenly became
much smaller.
Prior to the telegraph, politics
and business were constrained by geography. The world
was divided into isolated regions. There was limited
knowledge of national or international news, and that
which was shared was generally quite dated. After the
telegraph, the world changed. It seemed as if
information could flow like water.
By the 1850s, predictions about
the impact of the new medium began to abound. The
telegraph would alter business and politics. It would
make the world smaller, erase national rivalries and
contribute to the establishment of world peace. It
would make newspapers obsolete. All of the same
statements were made in the 1990s by people who were
wowed by the first-blush potential of the
Internet.
In an 1838 letter to Francis O.J.
Smith in 1838, Morse wrote:
"This mode of
instantaneous communication must inevitably become an
instrument of immense power, to be wielded for good or
for evil, as it shall be properly or improperly
directed."
The reaction of Senator Smith of Indiana
after a demonstration of the telegraph by Morse for
members of Congress in 1842, as reported in the 1915
book "A History of Travel in America":
"I watched his
countenance closely, to see if he was not deranged
… and I was assured by other senators after we
left the room that they had no confidence in
it."
When Congress was asked to
provide funds for a telegraph line between Baltimore
and New York City, the Congressional Globe (28th
Congress, second session) reported that Sen. George
McDuffie opposed it, explaining that he asked:
"...What was this
telegraph to do? Would it transmit letters and
newspapers? Under what power in the constitution did
Senators propose to erect this telegraph? He was not
aware of any authority except under the clause for the
establishment of post roads. And besides the telegraph
might be made very mischievous, and secret information
after communicated to the prejudice of
merchants."
When Morse offered to sell his telegraph
to the U.S. government for $100,000, the postmaster
general rejected the offer. James D. Reid explained the
rejection in his 1879 book "The Telegraph in
America":
"… the operation
of the telegraph between Washington and Baltimore had
not satisfied him that under any rate of postage that
could be adopted, its revenues could be made equal to
its expenditures."
When the first transatlantic
cable was built from England to the United States and
President Buchanan and Queen Victoria exchanged
messages in 1858, a writer for the Times of London
raved:
"Tomorrow the hearts of
the civilized world will beat in a single pulse, and
from that time forth forevermore the continental
divisions of the earth will, in a measure, lose those
conditions of time and distance which now mark their
relations."
Authors Charles F. Briggs and
Augustus Maverick wrote in their 1858 book "The
Story of the Telegraph":
"Of all the marvelous
achievements of modern science the electric telegraph
is transcendentally the greatest and most serviceable
to mankind … The whole earth will be belted with
the electric current, palpitating with human thoughts
and emotions … How potent a power, then, is the
telegraphic destined to become in the civilization of
the world! This binds together by a vital cord all the
nations of the earth. It is impossible that old
prejudices and hostilities should longer exist, while
such an instrument has been created for an exchange of
thought between all the nations of the
earth."
View history of other
information technologies:
<Telegraph>
<Radio>
<Telephone>
<Television>
<Internet>
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