The word "telegraph" originally referred to any device that facilitated long-distance communication. Although various means of "telegraphing" began thousands of years ago, it was not until the early nineteenth century that the concept of using electrical devices took root. By that time, Alessandro Volta had developed the battery, Hans Christian Oersted had discovered the relationship between electrical current and magnetism, and Joseph Henry had discovered the electromagnet. Combining these new technologies into a reliable communication system was to be the work of Massachusetts-born artist Samuel F. B. Morse.
Morse worked with partners Alfred Vail and Leonard Gale to design his electromechanical device, which Morse described as the "Recording Telegraph." In 1837, Morse's newly patented telegraph featured a dot-and-dash code to represent numbers, a dictionary to turn the numbers into words, and a set of sawtooth type for sending signals. Morse demonstrated his telegraph at a New York exhibition a year later with a model that used a dot-dash code directly for letters instead of the number-word dictionary. "Morse code" was to become standard throughout the world. The dots or dashes, created from an interruption in the flow of electricity, were recorded on a printer or interpreted orally.
In 1844, Congress funded $30,000 for the construction of an experimental telegraph line that was to run the forty miles between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. From the Capitol in Washington, Morse sent the first formal message on the line to Baltimore, "What hath God wrought?"
Rapid advances in telegraph use followed. Small telegraph companies began operations throughout the United States, including American Telegraph Company, Western Union Telegraph Company, New York Albany and Buffalo Electro-Magnetic Telegraph Company, Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company, Illinois and Mississippi Telegraph Company, and New Orleans and Ohio Telegraph Company. In 1861, Western Union built its first transcontinental telegraph line. The first permanently successful telegraphic cable crossing the Atlantic Ocean was laid five years later. The invention of "duplex" telegraphy by J. B. Stearns and "quadruplex" telegraphy by Thomas A. Edison in the 1870s enhanced the performance of the telegraph by allowing simultaneous messages to be sent over the same wire.
All rapid long-distance communication within private and public sectors depended on the telegraph throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. Applications were many: Railroads used the Morse telegraph to aid in the efficiency and safety of railroad operations, the Associated Press to dispatch news, industry for the transmission of information about stocks and commodities, and the general public to send messages. The telegraph's military value was demonstrated during the Civil War (1861–1865) as a way to control troop deployment and intelligence. However, the rival technologies of the telephone and radio would soon replace the telegraph as a primary source of communication.
Until the mid-1970s, Canada used Morse telegraphy, and Mexico continued with the system for its railroads up to 1990. However, the telegraph is no longer widely used, save by a small group of enthusiasts. Although radio-telegraphy (wireless transmission using radio waves) is still used commercially, it is limited in the United States to just a few shore stations that communicate with seafaring ships. Telephones, facsimile machines, and computer electronic mail have usurped the Morse model of long-distance communication.
Bibliography
Bates, David Homer, and James A. Rawley. Lincoln in the Telegraph Office: Recollections of the United States Military Telegraph Corps During the Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Blondheim, Menahem. News Over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844–1897. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Gabler, Edwin. The American Telegrapher: A Social History, 1860– 1900. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988.
Jolley, E. H. Introduction to Telephony and Telegraphy. London: Pitman, 1968.
